The After Story
by theravennerd
Summary: This is my version of what happens after the Reckoning. The gang goes a safe house before going to find the other subjects. Rated T for language, some things from my perverted mind, and some R movies mentioned.
1. I even missed the lumpy butt quote!

**Hello everyone! I'm Kate, 14, going into 9****th**** grade, and am obsessed with Darkest Powers. Just as I promised, I'm writing another story to compensate for ending my other one. For anyone who didn't read my other story, hi again. Don't go read my other story unless you have already. It sucked really badly and I'm going to try to make up for it's suckiness in this story. I'll attempt to cut down on chapter sizes because those were out of line. And I'll definitely keep to the plot in this one, which will actually have a plot unlike my other one. There will be a few characters from the other one that show up in this story but they'll all be reintroduced and change a little so **_**don't**_** feel like you need to go read more about them in The Reckoning My Way PLEASE! Okay I'll get to the story now. It might get boring but please just keep reading, every story has its boring parts! I'm sorry if you all think this story sucks, and go ahead and say that in a review or PM and tell me how I could make it less suckish. All the chapter names will be quotes from the chapter, so there **_**will **_**be a couple weird ones. I apologize in advance for the many grammar/spelling errors I will make throughout this story and anything that might seem out of character, which will probably be a lot of things. And I do not own Darkest Powers.**

Chloe's POV

I was jolted awake as the van hit a pothole. Looking around, I saw everyone looking pretty much the same as they had the entire 5 hours we'd been driving. Tori and Simon, who were sitting in the middle row, both had their faces plastered against their windows, sleeping and snoring softly. Kit and Aunt Lauren were still having whispered conversations up front, with Kit driving. And Derek was still next to me, looking out the window while pretending not to listen to what Kit and Aunt Lauren were saying. After a few seconds, he noticed I was awake and turned to me, giving me a tired half smile.

"Hey," he whispered, giving my hand a small squeeze.

"Hey," I whispered back, squeezing his hand as well. That was pretty much as affectionate as we ever got around my aunt, who still didn't really like us being together. And if it weren't for the fact that it was three a.m. and pitch black, she would probably be glaring at us through the rearview mirror.

It had only been a week since the infamous Edison Group lab showdown and all we been doing so far is drive from motel to motel, and not even the good ones like Best Westerns. We'd been keeping to Kit's lie-low plan and hadn't left the motels except for one grocery store stop (where we loaded up on everything non perishable that traveled well) and a trip to Wal-Mart for clothes, and our road trips from town to town. Now we were on the final leg of our journey, heading to a supposed safe house that Kit knew of. And I say supposed because we all know how safe our last one was. We were going to spend a few weeks there while resting up and making plans before we start calling or visiting any of the other subjects (another part of Kit's lie-low plan)** (See there is a plot coming!)**. The "safe house" was in Ohio, about 30 miles outside Toledo, and owned by some of Kit's supposed friends, that were not part of the group Andrew, Margret, and all those other people were.

"How much longer?" I asked Derek.

"Soon, we just passed Sandusky which was a couple miles away on the map."

"Well wake me when we get there," I said, too tired to stay up another few minutes. I leaned my head against Derek's shoulder and tried to fall asleep.

But of course, right before I actually fell asleep, Kit loudly said, "Kids, wake up. We're pulling in the driveway now." Growling, I rubbed my eyes and opened them, seeing Tori and Simon doing roughly the same thing. I groaned and raised my head off of Derek's shoulder.

"Who'd you say lives here Dad?" Simon asked while he stretched.

"Well there's a bunch of people who live here on and off but the family who owns the house lives here year round. Those are the Fords. You used to know the oldest kid, James, who's a year or two older than you, from when Frank and I would bring the kids to the lab."

"Well yeah I _definitely_ remember him," Simon said sarcastically. We sat in silence for a couple more minutes before we finally pulled up to the house. From what I could see, the house was probably a little bigger than average, except with a third floor, with a ton of pretty much open space around it, surrounded by pretty thick forest. A couple hundred yards away, I could see the glint of the moon on water, which I assumed to be Lake Erie.

"Well at least it's not old and creepy like the last one," Tori said.

"Always the optimistic one aren't you Tori?" I said. She glared at me before turning back to the window. Kit pulled up right next in front of the front door and unlocked the car, making the blinding lights turn on. Turning back to look at us, he said, "Okay I know you're all tired so I'll make this quick. Frank said that the whole third floor is bedrooms and as long as the door doesn't have a sign on it, you can all claim your own. If you see any people before introductions, just be nice. So just take your bags up and be quiet, we don't want any more cranky people walking around."

"Thanks Dad," Derek mumbled before getting up and running over Simon to get to the door. He always hated the car rides and the extra long one must have been really hard on him. He was already unloading our barely filled backpacks before Kit had even turned off the car. The rest of us jumped out after him and grabbed our bags, besides me anyway, Derek insisted that he carry mine.

We split up once we got inside, Aunt Lauren and Kit heading in one way to go look for Frank, the guy who owned the house and who said he would be up when we got here, and the rest of us straight up two flights heading for a bed. The stairs ended in the middle of a hallway that went ten feet or so before turning into two more hallways, one on each end.

"Night people," Tori said, quickly hurrying down to the left hallway. With a grunt and a wave, Simon followed her, leaving me and Derek alone. He looked down at me.

"To the right?"

"Sure." I replied tiredly, letting him lead me down the hall. The first few doors had signs with names I was too tired to read on them, but we found some that were right across the hall from each other. I walked into the one on the right and immediately fell face first onto the bed. I heard the thump of Derek putting my backpack down and flipped over do I could look at him. Being on the run with my disapproving aunt hadn't left us much alone time, probably only 20 minutes or so in the past week, which had really annoyed me. Hopefully being in an actual house would give us some privacy and I was planning on taking advantage of every time we got some.

Starting now.

I got off of the bed and walked over to the door, shutting it. Then, I walked the five steps to Derek and instantly wrapped my arms around his neck. Understanding what I was doing, he dropped his backpack and then put his arms around me, pulling me close.

"I like this house already," he murmured before pressing his lips against mine. I kissed him back instantly and after one glorious minute, He pulled away saying, "Dad and your aunt are coming up."

"Damn, can we ever catch a break?" I whined, dropping my head onto his chest.

"I know, it sucks," he said, kissing the top of my head. "I got to go before they come looking for one of us."

"Yeah that would be ugly," I said looking up at him. "Just wake me up when you get up."

"Sure but you'll be waking me, I plan on sleeping in," he said, yawning to prove his point.

"Fine, now get out of here," I said, giving him one last kiss.

"Night," he said, smiling, before grabbing his bag and leaving. _Uhg, I have got to get that boy alone._

Sighing, I walked over to my bag and pulled out a pair of sweats and tank top, my current makeshift pajamas. After changing, I checked out my room. It was about the size of any of our motel rooms, with a slightly bigger bathroom, and a closet. There were two dressers, an empty bookshelf, A desk with a chair, the bed (which looked like a queen), and a bedside table which had a digital clock and lamp on it. There were two windows in the wall opposite the door but it was too dark to see out of them. All in all a pretty boring room, but still nice. A knock on the door made me jump. _Please be Derek, please be Derek._

"Chloe?" my aunt's voice asked. _Damn._

"Yeah?" I asked, annoyed.

"Are you okay?"

"Uh… Yeah. Just tired."

"Okay you go ahead and sleep then. Where's Derek?" _Of course._

"Across the hall but I'm sure he's 'fine.' Good night."

"Good night sweetheart. I love you."

"Love you too, night." I heard the creaking of the floor under her feet as she retreated down the hall. _Probably to the next room down to make sure Derek and I stay apart._ Mentally groaning, I turned off the light and slipped under the covers, falling asleep almost instantly.

I woke up to, well nothing. Late morning light shown through the window as I flipped over to check the time. 12:22. Derek wasn't kidding about sleeping in. I got up and grabbed some of the hotel shampoo and soap I had stolen and took a shower. I then got dressed and went to wake up Derek. I knocked on his door and after two tries, heard him say, "Yeah?"

"It's me."

"Come in." I did and found him just getting out of his bed, dressed in only boxers of course. "Hey," he said grinning sleepily before grabbing a pair of jeans and pulling them up. Suddenly, he straightened up and sniffed the air. "Is that bacon?"

"No idea, you're the only one with superhuman senses."

"Actually no, I smelled at least two other werewolves on the way up."

"Well that's nice, you'll get to talk about stuff with them. You taking a shower, 'cause I'm really hungry."

"Took one last night," he said, pulling on a white t-shirt, that wasn't baggy. When we went clothes shopping he made the mistake of not participating and went to grab some snacks, leaving Tori the perfect chance to annoy him. He was pissed but quit complaining after a while, knowing it was useless. I for one never complained once, the shirts showed off his gorgeous muscles that I, and Tori, although she only admitted it once, found very attractive. "Ready?"

"Yup," I said, happily taking his hand and heading towards the stairs. With it now being light, I could see how nice the house was. It was on the fancier side but had nothing that was terribly breakable, which kind of scared me. I couldn't see any of the second floor other than a large room with some couches and a TV, although I could hear a bunch of noises that sounded like a Call of Duty video game coming from somewhere. The first floor was just huge, with a bunch of rooms. On our way to the kitchen, Derek following the smell of bacon, we passed through three different sitting rooms, only one of which had a TV, a room with a bunch of computers, and a dining room. Then we came into the gigantic kitchen, which had pretty much every major appliance in sterling silver, an island with stools around it, a pretty big table off to the side, and an open pantry across from the table that looked like it held half the grocery store.

There four people in the room, a blond woman who looked 45ish at the stove, cooking the bacon Derek had smelled, Kit, who was sitting at the table talking to a guy who also looked 45ish that had longish dark brown hair with grey sideburns, and a blonde guy my age who was sitting at the island eating peanut butter straight out of the jar. Yeah weird.

The blonde guy looked up and saw us, then said, "Oi, people are here!" in an amazing British accent **(former readers know who it is?)**. Everyone turned to look at us, which kind of creeped me out.

"Hey kids," Kit said from the table. "Tori's already up and she was outside the last time I saw her. So is Lauren, although I'm not sure where she went. Simon's still sleeping and we'll do introductions once he's up. This is Frank," motioning towards the guy he was talking to. "Claire," the woman at the stove. "And Charlie," the peanut butter guy. "And these are Chloe and Derek."

"Hi," I said, waving awkwardly. Derek of course said nothing.

"Go ahead and get some food guys," Claire said, pointing towards a counter that was piled high with it.

"Thanks," I said, pulling Derek to the counter with me. I filled up one plate, Derek got three. I was trying to find a way to avoid these people so I said, "Let's bring some up to Simon, he's slept long enough."

"Sure," Derek said, giving me a grateful look, saying that he wanted to be here just as much as I did. We filled up another plate for him, then accepting a tray Claire gave us, went upstairs.

"Okay what was with that guy eating peanut butter?" I asked when I thought we were out of earshot.

"I have no idea," Derek said, sniffing the air, trying to find out what room was Simon's I guess. "But he was weird. And the guy who was talking to my dad was a werewolf."

"Well that's cool, you can learn stuff from him. Like he could coach you through the Change-"

"I don't need any coaching as long as you're with me," he said quickly. _Awww! _I couldn't resist, I went up on my tip toes and kissed him quickly. He smiled before opening a door. Sure enough, there was Simon, sprawled across the bed on his stomach and snoring. Seeing that he was shirtless, I backed out of the room saying, "I'll be back in a minute so he can get dressed." Derek nodded and went to go wake him up while I walked down the hall.

In this hall there four doors with signs on them, opposed to the two in mine and Derek's. One said _Claire and Frank_, a second _Miles_, the third _Julie_, and the last was _Casey_. The first two were towards the front of the hallway, the other two almost at the end, right across the hall from each other. I check all the un-signed rooms for Tori's stuff and found it in a room diagonal to Simon's, guess she still didn't want to be left entirely alone. I after finding her stuff, I went back to Simon's room.

"Hey Chloe," Simon said, now awake and fully dressed. "Thanks for breakfast."

"Thanks for the excuse to leave, it was awkward down there," I said, grabbing my plate and digging in. "And we're doing intros as soon as you come down."

"Oh yay," he said through a mouthful of pancakes.

"Well we heard video games on the way down if that makes you feel better," Derek said, already done with one of his plates.

"You know, it actually does. I haven't played a video game in months," he said, sounding a little depressed.

"Aww, poor you," I said sarcastically. We spent the rest of breakfast talking about random things before we finally had to go down. When we got to the kitchen, only Claire was still there.

"You must be Simon," she said from the sink where she was washing dishes. "I'm Claire. If you guys would put those in the dishwasher, it would be a big help. As soon as I'm done with these we'll introduce you to everyone."

"I'll help then," Simon said, already rolling up his sleeves, always the polite one.

"He can't even pre-rinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, how the hell is he supposed to wash them?" Derek muttered in my ear. I laughed.

"Well great Simon, now you make us look rude," I said. "I'd help too but there's not really any room."

"I understand," Claire said. "Can you guys head upstairs then? We're doing intros in the big room with a bunch of couches on the second floor. Once Simon and I are done with these, I'll call everyone to go up there."

"Sure," I said, heading back to the stairs with Derek behind me. We found the same room that we could see from the stairs earlier and sat on one of the couches.

"How much you want to bet that Simon and Claire are best friends by the time they come up?" Derek asked.

"Nothin', I know they will be. Simon's too likable."

"That's for sure," he said, sliding his arm around me. Then, glancing at the TV, he said, "I wonder if this place has good TV."

"You wonder? After all the other fancy things you've seen here, you still wonder if they have good TV? I guess you're not that big of a genius after all."

"Now there's no need to be a smart ass," he said, reaching for a remote that was sitting on the arm of the couch. He turned on the TV and brought up the guide. Then, holding the remote out to me, he said, "You want to pick?"

"I'm good, just please don't turn on some army documentary."

"Was not planning on it." He scrolled through probably over a hundred channels before settling on Talladega Nights, which had barely started. Texas Ranger had just said "Chip I'm all jacked up on Mountain Dew!" when Claire's voice suddenly sounded through the house. "Okay everyone, get upstairs for intros. Less than two minutes or there will be trouble."

"Well this should be fun," Derek said.

"I agree." Right then, Simon came up with Claire, both of them laughing. "We were right."

"Hi guys," Simon said, waving and smiling. "Oooh, Talladega Nights." He jumped over the back of the couch, which surprisingly did _not_ get a disapproving look from Claire, and sat down next to Derek. 20 seconds later, there was the sound of someone running up the stairs and then a guy with a girl on his back came running in.

"Well that was fun!" the girl said, jumping off the guy's back. From the distance she was away, I could see that she had dark brown hair and was about 5" 7' while the guy was probably 6" 2' and had dark blonde hair that was almost brown. "Thanks Jimmy!"

"Quit calling me that," the guy, whose name was apparently not Jimmy, said. The girl turned towards the TV, where Ricky had just won the once race backwards, and screamed.

"Oh my God this is on? Claire, can intros wait until the commercial?"

"Nope."

"Aw come on! And I even missed T.R.'s lumpy butt quote! Damn it!"

"Calm down babe," the guy said. "Now I got to go get Charlie, be back in a second." He leaned down to kiss her before running back out of the room and down the stairs. The girl sighed loudly before sitting down on the couch, watching the movie with a pissed-off look. Another girl came in, this one with light blonde hair and a little shorter than the last one, and sat down next to the first. Then Kit and Frank came in and sat over by Claire.

"Weeee, weee, weee wee weeeeeeee! **(if you've seen the little piggy Geico commercial that's what it supposed to sound like)**," came from the stairs and a couple seconds later, the guy from earlier came running in with the Charlie guy, who was still making the "wee wee wee" noises, on his back. Jumping down, he said, "Again!"

"Hell no, you're too fricken' annoying," the guy said, walking over to sit next to the girl he had on his back earlier.

"You're mean!" Charlie yelled, acting like a little kid as he dropped onto a couch and crossed his arms. Tori came in then with an Asian guy with a goatee who looked 30 and Aunt Lauren. She walked over and sat down next to me.

"Where have you been?" I asked her.

"Checking out the house and the yard, which is awesome," she said.

"Okay guys," Claire said, muting the TV.

"Aw come on!" the one girl who liked the movie said. "A good line was just about to come up!"

"We have this on DVD," Claire said. "Watch it later. Anyway, let's start introductions. Casey, why don't you start since you just want to watch the movie anyway. You know the drill."

"Uhg fine but it's no good without sound anyway," the movie girl, who was apparently Casey, said and stood up. "Casey, shaman, 15, like roller coasters, movies, Will Ferrell, books, and stupid YouTube videos." She sat back down, still pissed about not hearing the movie, and the guy who was giving her and Charlie piggyback rides stood up.

"Hello! I'm James, am 17, and a werewolf. I like TV, annoying people, acting idiotically, and eating. And since Casey's too pissed to mention it, she's my girlfriend." He sat again and the other girl stood up.

"I'm Julie and am a 15 year old witch. I enjoy swimming, reading, animated movies, acting, and being really random. James' sister." Charlie stood up.

"Okay, I'm Charlie, 16, and a sorcerer. I like blowing things up, making things fly into people, acting half my age, music, and stupid American shows." He still had that awesome accent. The Asian guy stood up.

"Miles, am 32, and a necromancer. I like talking to dead people, play with weapons, fish tacos, and watching cheesy movies." Claire stood up then.

"I'm Claire, am 44, and a fire half demon. I like cooking, bad reality TV, and sappy romance stories. And I'm James and Julie's mom and Frank's wife." Frank stood up next.

"I'm Frank, 46, werewolf. I like pizza, being sarcastic, classical books, and the Discovery Channel. James and Julie's dad and Claire's husband." Frank sat down and that was the end of the new people. Kit stood up.

"So I'm Kit, 47, and a sorcerer. I like war movies, watching baseball, and Coke. I'm Simon and Derek's dad." At the end he hesitated, like he wanted to add Tori. He still hadn't told her he was her dad, although I'm not even sure he was planning on it. _If a week goes by and he hasn't told her, I'll say something_, I told myself. Aunt Lauren went.

"I'm Lauren, am 38, and a human. I like traveling, shopping, and playing card games and I'm Chloe's aunt." Next was Simon.

"Hi, I'm Simon, 15, and a sorry excuse for a sorcerer. I like drawing, comic books, basketball, and action movies." Then it was Derek's turn.

"Be nice," I whispered as he got up, knowing he would hear me.

"Derek, 16, and a werewolf. I like eating, sleeping, and usually avoiding conversations." He sat back down and I glared at him for his unfriendly intro before standing up myself.

"I'm Chloe and am a 15 year old necromancer with abnormally strong powers, so don't get too freaked out if you see some zombie rabbit running around or something." That earned a freaked out look from everyone new, except for Miles who looked intrigued, and a shudder from Tori. "I like pretty much all movies, listening to music, reality shows, and the internet. And I'm Derek's girlfriend." I sat down again and then the only one left was Tori.

"I'm Tori, 16, and a really powerful witch, so you better not piss me off. I like computers, shopping, cleaning, and old books." She sat down and Casey immediately shouted, "Okay un-mute it! Un-mute it! The George Bush and Cheerios thing is gonna come up!"

"Okay Case," Claire said, taking the TV off mute. A second after she pressed the button, the quote that Casey was talking about came up. She knew this movie well and recited the whole next minute, with the perfect Girard accent.

"Well I got to go do some laundry," Claire said, getting up. Aunt Lauren offered to help and they left the room. After a few minutes, Kit and Frank left, saying something about making plans, yay. Then the commercial break started and Casey turned to us.

"Okay, so when new people come here," she started. "We give them a chance to get used to all our weirdness in just a couple of hours. Otherwise you'll just be thinking 'What the hell is wrong with them' for weeks before you get used to us. It actually works pretty well, just ask Charlie. You guys up for it?"

"Sure," Simon said immediately. "Got nothing better to do."

"I guess," Tori said. "Like Simon said, nothing else to do."

"Actually there's a ton," Julie said. "You just haven't seen the house yet, but we'll give you guys a tour." I looked up at Derek.

"I don't care," he said, shrugging.

"Then we'll go too," I said.

"Cool!" Casey said, jumping off the couch.

"Miles you coming with?" James asked. "You're as much of a freak as any of us."

"Oh thank you James," Miles said. "I feel so loved and included. But yes I will come."

"Then let the weirdness initiation begin!"

**So like? Love it? Hate its guts? Think it sucked or was super boring? Please tell me your honest opinion in a review or PM! PLEASE! So any former readers of my other story think this one is better. It's at least shorter right, and that's a really good thing. I'll try to keep my chapters less than 5,000 words, that way it won't take so long to update and you guys don't have to sit at your computer reading a super long 9,000 word chapter that's really boring. Almost all my characters names are from Lost, which I am a ginormus fan of, and they're all supposed to look like that character as well, so if you want a visual, go look them up (Julie's name is actually Juliet), except Casey who is based off of me. I'm really sorry that Kit and Lauren liked really random things in their introductions but we don't know them too well so I just put down some stuff, which can be changed if anyone gives me some good suggestions. Okay for those of you who read The Reckoning My Way, Julie in this one is actually Charlotte from the last one, I just needed a J name from Lost and Juliet is the only one for a girl I could think of so I stole her name. I really like Talladega Nights, so there will probably be a couple times it's mentioned. On a really random note, anyone seen Zombieland? I just watched it and loved it. Anyway, please, please, please, please review! Thanks a ton for reading! I'll try to update soon!**


	2. For Narnia!

**Okay people, I'm really, really sorry about not updating in so long. I've been really busy with all the getting back to school stuff and I had to read The Count of Monte Cristo, which sucked really badly, and I still have to finish the stupid packet for it which I hate! I've also been trying to finish my one book that I'm reading for fun so I can read Mockingjay when it comes out and then re-read the Mortal Instruments before the Clockwork Angle comes out, which probably won't happen but I'll still try. My friend also made me watch A Very Potter Musical, which I loved and had to finish, but it's super long and I'm now on the sequel and I just can't stop watching it! So I haven't really had any time to type and I'm really sorry about that. Here's the chapter and I'm sorry that there probably are grammar/spelling errors and things that seem out of character. Don't own Darkest Powers like everyone else on FanFiction, that is unless Kelly Armstrong has a story on here, but I doubt it!**

Chloe's POV

Casey led us out of the room and outside.

"Okay, first thing is you have to learn to play our stupid games, starting with Ninja!" (**Ninja is like the greatest game on the planet!)**

"YAAAAAAYYYYYY!" Julie yelled, literally jumping up and down with excitement.

"And that's an example of some people's extreme enthusiasm," James said.

"Hey it's a fun game," Charlie said. "As long as I don't stand next to you or Miles." Miles laughed at some memory.

"Anyway," Casey said, giving everyone a shut-the-hell-up look. "We'll do a demonstration game in slow motion to show you guys how to play." They all stood in a circle before Casey continued. "Okay, so you start out with your hands together." She and everyone else demonstrated. "Then someone calls 'Ninja!'" All of them immediately took their hands apart and got into a ninja-like stance. "And then you move your arms into a position of your choice. The whole point of the game is to hit another person's hand, and once you're hit you're out. You have to stay still when it's not your turn, unless someone's trying to attack you. If it's you turn or someone's coming after you, you can use one fluid motion to get their hand or avoid being hit. You can jump out of the way too, and move your arms as you jump as long as you stop moving your arms when you touch the ground. Okay, the person to the right of the one who called 'Ninja' starts and then it goes in a circle. In this case, James goes first. Move slowly so they can see."

"You're no fun," he whined as he brought down one hand onto Julie's.

"Damn it I wasn't ready!" she yelled.

"You always have to be on guard during Ninja," Miles, who was next, said as he went for Casey's hand. Casey jumped out of the way and immediately Charlie hit Miles' hand. "You sneaky little asshole"

"Yep that's me!" Charlie said, flashing a pretty cute, although it didn't even compare to Derek's, smile.

"Okay so are you guys getting this so far?" Casey asked.

"Yup," Simon said, looking like he really wanted to start playing himself. Tori, Derek, and I all said some form of yes.

"Okay cool," Casey said, going straight for James' hand. He saw it though and moved out of the way and then went back for hers. They collided with a really loud smack, and Casey rubbed her hand. "Jerk."

"Oh please that won't even leave a bruise," James said. "Charlie's the only one who gave you one."

"Hi-ya!" Charlie yelled before slapping James' hand. "Haha, I win!"

"Okay that was so not fair, I was making sure she was okay," James said.

"No, you were telling me it didn't hurt," Casey said. "And it didn't, I just was distracting you so Charlie could go in for the kill!" Turning to us she said, "So everything make sense? Ready to play?" We all said yes and everyone got back into a circle.

"Ninja!" Charlie yelled. That first game ended with James winning, a pissed off Tori wanting redemption, and Simon getting a bruise from Casey. They all had a tendency to yell something ninjay when they went for a hand, and by the third game, everyone one of us, yes including Derek, was making ninja sounds as we attacked. After like ten games, we surprisingly all won at least one and most of our hands were bright red.

"Anyone up for tennis?" Charlie asked, laughing.

"Yeah!" Casey said, holding out one of her hands. Charlie looked down at it with a terrified expression. "Hey you asked for it buddy."

"I hate myself," he said, grabbing Casey's outstretched hand. "I get to go first."

"Nope," she said, slapping her other hand against his.

"Ahhhhh! Damn it, I hate this game!" Charlie yelled, slapping her hand the same way she did to him, only not as hard.

"Come on, don't hold back," Casey said, slapping his hand again. "Women have a higher tolerance for pain than men do you know."

"Well ain't that encouraging," he said, grimacing in pain as she slapped him again. He tore his hand away. "Okay I give up."

"Wimp," Casey said before turning back to us newbies. "Okay who wants a tour of the yard?" we all agreed and she started towards the lake.

They had a dock with a canoe, a motor boat, water skiing equipment, 2 two person jet skis, and one of those water trampoline things. Next to the dock was a little storage building. There was also a tire swing on a willow that went over that water down the shore.

"That's a lot of cool stuff," Tori said, going over to look at the water ski stuff.

"Yeppers," Charlie said, jumping into the boat. "And there's some even cooler floaty things in the shed."

"Okay can we go now?" Simon said. Who knew he had such a short attention span.

"Sure," James said. "You want to see the happy fun bouncy center or the garage?"

"Happy fun bouncy center!" I said.

"Somehow I figured you'd choose that," James said, walking back to the house. "People we're leaving!"

"Damn," Tori said, stomping over to Derek and me.

"Why are you so pissed?" Derek asked her. In the past week, the two of them had actually started almost getting along. They would take part in the same conversation for several minutes before one of them seemed to remember that they didn't like each other and then do something to make the other mad. It was actually hilarious to watch, and me and Simon had a bet on who would admit they actually liked the other first. I was going for Derek, while Simon thought Tori would. The loser gets to be the winner's personal slave for a full 42 hours. Why 42? I have no idea, ask Simon.

"I was still looking at the water ski stuff. It's pretty high tech."

"How is a little board, some rope, and a handle high tech?" I asked.

"Well you know what I mean," Tori said, glaring at me.

"How do you know anything about water skiing anyway?" Derek asked.

"My dad used to take me to one of his friend's lake cabin every summer for two weeks. The guy had a daughter a year younger than me and she taught me how to water ski. I'm an expert, literally."

"Wow," I said. "You never really struck me as a water skiing type of person."

"Well then you were wrong," she said.

"Oh great," Derek muttered.

"What?" I asked, a little freaked by his tone. He just glanced ahead of us and I followed his gaze until I found what he was looking at.

"What's so bad about a trampoline?" I asked. Around a hundred feet ahead of us were two yard trampolines, neither of which had nets, and both of which looked really fun.

"Trampoline!" Simon yelled loudly, making Derek wince, running towards the tramps.

"Simon has a thing for trampolines," he said simply, shaking his head. "A really annoying obsession." In a few seconds, some really creepy giggling started.

"Oh my God," Tori said, staring with horror at the trampolines. She then quickly looked at the ground muttering, "Well that's not going to scar me for life." I turned to looked at the trampolines again and saw Simon jumping up and down, giggling like an idiot, with a really creepy expression on his face that I wasn't sure should be laughed at or back away slowly from.

"I see what you mean," I said, hiding behind Derek. "Please tell me this won't last long."

"This will probably only be a few minutes," he said. "And then- Oh great, people are going on with him."

"Who?" I asked, leaning around him to look for myself. Charlie and Casey were both up on the same tramp as Simon was on, Charlie doing flips and Casey trying to knock him off balance.

"Uh… Does he always act like this?" James asked, walking towards us. "Cause its really creepy."

"He should stop in a few minutes," Derek said. "Although he won't get off for around 30."

"Well then I think he's accustomed to some of our weirdness," James said before yelling, "Come on Case! We've got other stuff to do!"

"Killjoy!" Casey yelled before jumping down. "Come on little Brit boy."

"Hey I'm older than you," Charlie said, jumping down after her.

"Well you sure don't act like it," Miles said.

"Look who's talking, I've seen you on that trampoline several times."

"Your point is?"

"Okay can we just go?" Julie asked.

"Yeah, and I think Simon's just going to stay here," Tori said, looking back at him and shivering then muttering, "How did I ever like that guy?"

"Okay… We can move onto getting used to our weird sense of humor now! To the computers!" Casey yelled, running towards the house with her arm in a charging position.

"For Narnia!" Charlie yelled as he ran after her with a similar arm position. Then he stopped and said, "Sorry, I couldn't resist." We all walked back to the house, leaving Simon still jumping and giggling.

Once we got inside, we followed Casey through several rooms into the one with all the computers. She immediately turned on a light turquoise laptop and then a projector. After a minute, she had the laptop connected to the projector and was bringing up YouTube.

"Okay, so," she said, turning to look at us. "All of us are completely obsessed with YouTube and have tons of awesome videos we love. Now, most of them are extremely weird and but we think they're funny so laugh. My favorite will be first." She typed in "You ain't got no pancake mix" in the search thing and then clicked the first video. It was pretty stupid, just this guy who went up to some preacher lady and shouted "You ain't got no pancake mix!" several times while she was trying to preach stuff, but it was actually sort of funny. Casey and Charlie cracked up while Miles, James, Tori, and Derek were trying to hold back laughter.

"See wasn't that funny?" Casey asked.

"Uh… Sure?" I said.

"Yeah it is, okay what's next?"

"Chubby Cuppy Cake Boy!" Julie said. Casey typed that in and we watched a video of a kid who was really fat, because he was taking steroids to control his kidney disease or something according to Casey, kid lip sing this song. It was actually really cute.

We sat there for like 30 minutes, watching tons of videos, including Chinchilli Day, an Asian kid singing my heart will go on really badly with some interesting dance moves, some other videos by the same guy, Creepy Dog with Bizarre Bark, Top 5 most Annoying Sounds, the Elmo Prank Calls, and creepy car commercial. **(Ok guy if you want to start cracking up, watch any of those. Especially Creepy Car Commercial, but you have to look at the car really closely to get it. Tell me if you watch them please!)**

"Well that was interesting," Derek said once he finally stopped laughing at my reaction to the car commercial.

"Shut up," I said, shoving him.

"Well it was pretty funny," Tori said, still laughing.

"I agree," Casey said, also laughing.

"So…" Miles said. "What's next?"

"Popsicle?" Charlie suggested.

"Nah, we already did outside games," Julie said. "How about truth or dare?"

"Okay I'm gone," Miles said, standing up and leaving the room quickly.

"He's so boring," Charlie said. "Anyway I say we play it."

"Me too!" Tori said excitedly. "I've been wanting to play that for ever."

"Fine, but no questions about current relationships," Casey said. "You guys were being total pervs last time."

"Aw come on!" Tori cried, stomping her foot. "That's why I wanted to play! Chloe doesn't tell me anything about her and Wolf Boy."

"You never asked," I pointed out. When she looked at me hopefully I quickly added, "And if you do that doesn't mean I will."

"Well I guess we're playing then," Charlie said, jumping off the counter he had been sitting on. "Now who wants to go get the creepy jumpy kid?"

"His name is Simon," Derek snapped before he saw my glare, then he added a bit nicer, "And Chloe and I will."

"Nah," Casey said, also jumping off a counter. "Shaman right here. I'll get him. James think fast!" As soon as she said that she fell backwards into James, who was also sitting on a counter (What is with these people? There are 15 perfectly good chairs and stools all around the room!), who caught her right before she hit the ground.

"God I hate it when she does that!" he said, picking her up and sitting her on his lap.

"Just be thankful that she's not clumsy too," Derek said. "I'm constantly catching Chloe." I smacked his arm because it sounded like he hated doing it. "Not that I'm complaining or anything."

"You better not be," I said, looking up at him. We made eye contact and I got butterflies in my stomach, again. I really needed to get used to us looking at each other.

"Hey you guys aren't going to start making out are you?" Tori asked. ""Cause I would prefer to keep my breakfast down."

"Tori!" Derek and I yelled at the same time, both of us blushing, although on Derek it was much less prominent.

"Hey no need to get so defensive," she said. "It was just a question."

"What was?" Simon said, walking into the room with Casey's astral projection floating beside him.

"Nothing," Derek and I said quickly, at the same time again.

"Okay then," he said, taking the chair next to Julie. "So truth or dare?"

"Yep!" Casey said, now back in her body. "But we should probably go somewhere else to play. Outside, the basement, my room, or Charlie's room?"

"Why not mine?" James asked.

"Cause Charlie's is cooler, now pick one."

"Is the basement finished?" I asked.

"Hell yeah," Charlie answered. "And it's the awesome."

"Then my vote's for the basement," I said.

"Me too," Derek said. Tori and Simon also voted for the basement so James led us to it.

The basement was in fact really cool. It was just a big open room, with what I assumed was a bathroom in one corner, but had three different areas. One was a square of four couches, all facing each other, with a big wooden coffee table in the middle. Another had an old pool table, a ping pong table, foosball, and air hockey along with a bar. The last was in a corner, with shelves shielding it somewhat from the rest of the room. There were a couple nice wood tables surrounded by comfy looking armchairs, reminding me of a library. The shelves had all sorts of stuff on them, books, movies, board games, Mr. Clean products, little decorative things, and a bunch of other junk that you would find in a basement. The rest of the room was just open space.

We all headed over to the couches and sat down there. I was on one alone with just Derek.

"So who wants to start?" James asked, laying down on the couch he was sharing with Casey.

"I do!" Charlie said, waving his hand enthusiastically.

"Okay but we have to go over rules first," Julie said. "You have to ask a different person than the person before you, no really big dares, like kissing or anything more."

"Yeah because after last time I'm scared for life!" Charlie yelled.

"Shut up Chuckie," James said, throwing a pillow at him. "And conjure me up some popcorn, I'm hungry."

"Fine," Charlie said. "Anyone else?" Turned out everyone wanted popcorn. "K one sec." He closed his eyes for a couple seconds, then opened them and a bowl of popcorn appeared on everyone's lap.

"Dude you have got to teach me that," Simon said, staring at his bowl.

"Okay can we get back to rules now?" Casey asked. Not waiting for an answer, she said, "You only get two chickens, and if you want to use them you have to do the chicken dance, with sound effects. After you use them all and you still refuse to do or answer something, we're going to tie you up in an awkward position, put you on the roof, put a knife were you can get it once you have the proper motivation. **(Okay probably no one knows what I'm talking about but if you watch Lost, it's what Locke does to Boone in Hearts and Minds, one of the best episodes but also one of the saddest in my opinion. Anyway don't worry about it if you have no idea what I mean.)** And nothing leaves this room. Julie?"

"Already put up the sound proofing and door alarm," she said.

"Alright, then Charlie, you can start."

"Yay! Uh… Tori, truth or dare?"

"Um… Truth," she said, looking slightly nervous.

"Okay… Which guy here do you find the most attractive?"

"Not Simon or Wolf Boy that's for sure," she said quickly. Then she looked between Charlie and James before saying, "You guys are pretty close though, although I would say James is slightly hotter, but the your accent makes up for it by a lot so I would have to say you."

"Really?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Yeah now go Simon," Tori said.

"Okay…" Simon said, looking at all of us before his eyes settled on me. "Chloe, truth or dare?"

"Uh… Dare," I said, not knowing what he might pick for truth.

"Damn I had a good one for truth. Oh I got one! Lick Tori's foot!"

"No!" Tori yelled, pulling up her feet and sitting on them.

"Hey it counts as a chicken for you too if she doesn't do it," James told her.

"What? That is so not fair!" she yelled.

"Is too!" Casey said. "Now either agree to it or use a chicken and Chloe gets a new dare."

"Fine," Tori said, propping a foot up on the table while crossing her arms and scrunching her nose.

"I don't want to lick Tori's foot," I said, grimacing. Simon started making chicken noises and was soon joined by Charlie and James. It was really annoying. "Okay fine! I'll do it! Just stop with the annoying sounds!" I stood off of my couch and moved over to where Tori was. I knelt down by her foot and said "Sorry," before quickly touching my tongue to her foot.

"Eww!" she cried, pulling her foot away and rubbing it on the carpet. I wiped my tongue with the sleeve of my shirt and went back to Derek.

"I'm sorry," he said, putting his arm around me.

"Thank you," I said, still rubbing my tongue.

"My turn!" Casey said happily. "Julie, truth or dare?"

"Truth."

"What actor are you currently obsessed with and why are you obsessed with them?"

"Uh… Logan Lermen because he is very attractive and also because he plays some awesome roles." **(Yay for Logan Lerman!)**

"Okay," James said. "Charlie, truth or dare?"

"Dare me!"

"Shouldn't have chosen that," James said with an evil grin. "Go put on a Speedo and start dancing around the house singing I've Got Nerve by Hannah Montana."

"Nice one babe," Casey said, slapping his already stretched out hand.

"You're an evil little man," Charlie said, getting up and walking towards the bathroom.

"Hey I'm older and bigger than you, in a lot of ways."

"Okay that's a little disturbing," Julie said.

"They're guys Jules," Casey said. "I would have thought you'd be used to it by now."

"I usually am," she said.

"Charlie hurry up!" James yelled.

"God one second!" he yelled back from the bathroom. After like five seconds he walked out with just a purple Speedo on.

"Ah!" Casey yelled, shoving her face into James' shoulder. "Speedos are scary, Speedos are scary!"

"I thought you accidentally saw him naked once," Julie said.

"Yeah and this reminds me off it," she said. "My poor scarred little mind."

"Okay shut up now," James said, smoothing her hair. "Now start singing and dancing and go upstairs."

"Fine," Charlie said. He started up the stairs and I could only hear him sing "We haven't me, but that's okay," in a pretty good singing voice before the basement door closed again.

"Okay moving on," James said. "I think it's Derek's turn."

"Oh joy," he said, immediately looking at me. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth," I said, looking up at his absolutely gorgeous eyes.

"Okay… What's the weirdest dream you've ever had?"

"Hm…. I had one where we did karate in our gym lockers for a gym class," I said. **(That actually was my dream.)**

"Ha mine are weirder!" Casey said. "One time I-"

"Case no one wants to hear," James said.

"Right," Casey said. "Chloe your turn."

"Okay… Casey, truth or dare?"

"Truth!"

"What was the most embarrassing secret you ever had?"

"Aww come on not that one!" she whined. "But in 5th grade I had a crush on my principal."

"He wasn't some old guy was he?" Tori asked. "Or was he even a man?"

"Yes he was a man! And no, he was like in his late 20's."

"Okay I guess that's not too creepy then," Tori said.

"Okay people!" Charlie yelled, running down the stairs. "My dare is done! And Chloe, I think your aunt might have had a heart attack from seeing all this hotness."

"Seriously?" I asked, sort of alarmed.

"Nah, but she was freaked out! So whose turn is it?" he asked, sitting back down, still wearing only the Speedo.

"Mine," Julie said. "And will you go put some clothes on? Or at least pants? Really the Speedo's starting to freak me out."

"Ha you're not really looking at the Speedo!" Charlie said.

"Oh my God Charlie!" Julie yelled, hiding behind a pillow.

"Come on man," James said. "Put some pants on, you're scaring my sister."

"Fine," Charlie said, walking back to the bathroom.

"Thank you James," Julie said. "Uh… Simon, truth or dare?"

"Dare."

"Okay, Casey, ask Miles to toss down a bottle of something from the fridge."

"On it," Casey said, immediately becoming limp.

"Okay is this better?" Charlie asked, coming out of the bathroom with his jeans and tee shirt on again.

"Yup," Julie said. Just then Miles shouted, "Bottle down the hole!" James immediately got up, vaulted over a couch, ran to the stairs, and caught the bottle of soy sauce right before it hit the ground.

"Nice," Casey said, back in her body again.

"Here," James said, holding the bottle out to Julie.

"Thanks," she said. "Oooh, soy sauce." She looked at how much was left in the bottle before saying, "Okay Simon, chug the rest of this."

"Seriously?" he asked, taking the bottle carefully.

"Yup, now do it." He swallowed nervously before putting the bottle to his lips and downing the soy sauce.

"Oh God," he said, sticking out his tongue and making gagging noises. "That was nasty!"

"Ha and no water for a round," Julie said. "Tori your turn."

"Yay!" she said. "Okay Derek, truth or dare?"

"Uh… Truth?" he said hesitantly. Tori started laughing.

"Have you ever gotten to second base?" she asked before cracking up.

"Tori!" Derek and I yelled again, both of us blushing. Strangely enough, and I say that with sarcasm, we hadn't. The ten minutes we had alone were in a grocery store, and people don't normally got to second base at a grocery store. I was hoping that that would change once we spent a few days here.

"What?" she asked once she could talk again. "It isn't against any rules, and I didn't ask if you did it with Chloe," Laugh, "it was just a general question. So what's the answer?"

"No!" Derek yelled, still blushing, which made him look really hot.

"Uh huh," Tori said, looking at me.

"W-w-why the hell would he l-l-lie?" I asked. "And in case you didn't n-notice, we've been alone all of ten m-m-minutes since we've been on the run with Kit and my aunt."

"Okay fine," Tori huffed, crossing her arms again. "Go Charlie."

"Okay, James, truth or dare?" he asked.

"Truth." Charlie laughed the same exact way Tori had last time.

"Have you ever gotten to third base?" he asked, snickering. Both James and Casey's jaws fell open and they also started blushing. "Hey you got to answer it, and if you take the chicken then everyone will know you have so just say it."

"Uh… Uuuhhh… Well I wouldn't actually say all the way to third," James said, still blushing. "Maybe like 2 and 5/8s."

"Interesting," Charlie said. "Very interesting."

"Shut up you perv," Casey said.

"Okay, my turn!" Simon said. "Tori, truth or dare?"

"Dare," she said quickly.

"Okay, name a piece of clothing."

"Boxers." Simon laughed.

"Okay. Derek, go get a pair of your boxers."

"Uh… Okay," he said before leaving the room.

"Oh God I'm not going to like this am I?" Tori asked.

"Hell no," Simon said, laughing still.

"Okay, we need to go back to the weirdness orientation," Casey said. "After this were doing something different."

"Fine, but Tori still has to do her dare," Simon said, smiling like an idiot. Then Derek came back down with a pair of boxers.

"What do you want me to do with this?" he asked.

"Tori needs to wear them on her head for 15 minutes," Simon said, cracking up.

"What?" Tori yelled. "Those haven't been washed in a week!"

"Yeah I know," Simon said. "Now put them on your head, no chickens."

"No fair!" she yelled. I started laughing at her expression.

"Yes fair," Casey said. "Now put them on before I have James tie you up."

"Oh my God," Tori said, taking the boxers from Derek with two fingers and holding them an arm's length away. "My poor head."

"I'm burning those when she's done," he whispered when he came back and sat down next to me.

"Aw come on," I said. "She's not that bad."

"Yeah she is," he said, although it didn't sound like he meant it. I shoved him before looking back at Tori.

"These things are huge," she said, now holding the boxers with both hands, still just by two fingers. "How the hell am I supposed to fit them on my head?"

"I don't know, you figure it out," Simon said, turning to Casey. "So what are we doing next?"

"Hm… I don't know. James do you have any suggestions?"

"Movies?" he offered.

"Yes! I need a movie right about now," she said, jumping off the couch. "Anyone up for Zombieland?"

"Never heard of it," I said.

"Why does no one ever know what Zombieland is?" she yelled. "Okay well we're watching it, then… Transformers 2."

"That I've heard of, and I loved it," I said.

"Yay! Let's go!" she said, grabbing James' hand and dragging him off the couch. We all followed her.

"Chloe," Tori said, still trying to figure out how to make the boxers fit on her head. She handed me a ponytail holder. "Bunch this up for me. It's _your_ boyfriend's so you can touch it."

"Oh my God Tori," I said, taking the holder and pulling the waistband until it was tight around her head. "What is your problem with Derek?"

"A lot of things, and you think I would want to put anyone else's dirty boxers on my head?" she asked, shivering. I finished with the boxers and then caught up with Derek.

"Am I the only one who still finds these people weird?" he asked, taking my hand.

"No, but they're growing on me," I said. "At least they're weird in an entertaining way."

"Okay I'll give them that," he said as we reached the second floor. Casey was popping in a movie while everyone else was sitting down at the couch.

"This movie has like the virus zombies right?" I asked. "Not the brought back from the dead type?"

"Sadly they're the virus type," Casey said. "I have yet to see a movie with previously dead zombies."

"Chloe can show you one," Tori said. "But I doubt you'd want to."

"Are you kidding me?" Casey said, turning to me. "I've always wanted to see a reanimated body but Miles says it's too hard and it would be illegal to get a dead human body! If I get you something dead can you make it a zombie?" She seemed like she really meant it, and that sort of freaked me out.

"Well it's not hard for me and I don't know," I said. "I don't like doing it because then the things get mad at me and try to kill me usually."

"Seriously?" James asked. "That's awesome!"

"Not when you see a dead body crawling on top of her," Derek said.

"Yeah that was really creepy," Tori said.

"Yeah and you thought a hairbrush would save you from it!" Simon said, laughing at the memory.

"Well I'm sorry, I reacted by grabbing the closest thing that I could hit someone on the head with."

"But still, a hairbrush?" Charlie asked, laughing.

"Okay people shut up!" Casey said. "I need to watch Zombieland. Wait one sec." she went limp and after ten seconds came back. "Okay Miles is coming. Movie time!" She turned on the DVD player and then fast forwarded through all the previews to the actual movie.

It was actually pretty funny, it an extremely stupid way. Like the one guy, Tallahassee, was just obsessed with finding a Twinkie, and then Bill Murray showed up and it was just weird, but funny. Casey apparently thought so too because she was cracking up for literally the entire movie, which got annoying. Although it did sort of make me depressed when Columbus found out the Columbus (the actual city in Ohio) had been infected and his parents were dead. It made me think of my dad and how I still needed to convince Aunt Lauren to let me call him to tell him I was fine.

After that we watched the second Transformers, which was as good as ever.

"Okay, so who wants to see the video game room?" Casey said, jumping off the couch.

"Do you have Call of Duty?" Simon asked.

"Hell yeah, all of them on Wii!" Charlie yelled.

"Then yes I would like to see the video game room."

"Great, 'cause you didn't really have a choice," Casey said before skipping out of the room.

"Well yay," Derek said sarcastically, pulling me off the couch with him.

"What? You afraid of getting your ass beat by someone?" Tori asked.

"Not by you that's for sure."

"Oh really? Casey do you have Mario Kart?"

"Yup."

"Okay, then let's make a bet," Tori said, smiling. "If I beat you on Mario Kart, you have to… go two days without wearing a shirt."

"Oooh, I'm scared now," he said. "And If I win, you have to go two days without making smart ass comments."

"Hey you're the smart ass," she said. "But fine, it's a bet." Turned out that Tori was incredibly talented at Mario Kart and beat Derek bad, not that I was really hoping he would win anyway.

**Okay that has got to be the crappiest ending to a chapter ever. Sorry guys, but otherwise I would have kept going and you would have gotten a really long chapter which would have sucked even worse than this one. Anyway, please tell me what you thought of this chapter. Who liked their truth or dare? It was pretty boring, but if you want me to make them play it again, say so in a review or PM please! Again I'm sorry that it most likely sucked. And just so you guys know, almost everything Casey says or does or likes is something I would have said or done or like. And seriously guys, go watch those videos, they're awesome, along with a Very Potter Musical. And Ninja rocks! I'll update as soon as I can, but school starts in 6 days so I don't know when that will be. Review please!**


	3. A little gecko named Vincent

**Okay people, I'm so so so so so so so sorry about not updating in SO long. But seriously, I've had so much homework since school started, being a freshman sucks, and then whenever I didn't have homework someone else was on the computer. And I would have gotten this up a while ago, but when I type at night I usually stay up until like 2 until last week when these creepy noises started to randomly appear. And I got really creeped out so I've been going to bed at like 12:30 because that's when they start. Okay, so here is the crappy chapter that it took me two months to write. Once again I'm sorry for any errors or out of characterness and I don't own DP.**

Chloe's POV

"Give me the fricken remote!" Casey yelled at Charlie, who was sitting on top of the remote so we could continue watching Project Runway.

"No," he said. "You're the only one who doesn't like Project Runway, so go watch your stupid show somewhere else."

"Actually I don't like it either," Derek said. I was leaning against him in the corner of the couch. It was the second day we'd been at the house, so he had just passed the 24 hour mark of wearing no shirt. Aunt Lauren had freaked out when she found out, and Kit had to explain how important bets were to her to make her stop ranting. It was almost 3:30, and all the kids were in the room, while the adults were doing who knows, or cares, what downstairs.

"Total Drama World Tour is not stupid!" Casey shouted. "And it's a marathon tonight and I haven't seen the past two episodes!"

"I thought the only cartoon show you liked was Ben 10," James said, not looking away from the TV.

"Well I changed my mind!" she shouted, her voice getting louder and louder. Who knew someone could get so worked up about a TV show? "And this is an old episode!"

"Well so are yours!" Charlie yelled back. "Just go to a different TV."

"But I want the big screen!" Casey whined. Then she turned to James. "James get the remote."

"Nope, I like this show," he said, still not looking away from the TV.

"Same," Tori said. "And I'm willing to fight to keep it on." Casey made a bunch of sounds that sounded like she was trying to think of something to say before running down the stairs yelling "Claire!"

"She's really stubborn isn't she?" Simon asked.

"Yep," Julie said, sighing. "And it gets really annoying."

"And she's also super protective," Charlie said. "Whatever you do, don't insult her shows or touch her books. I swear if she were a witch or a half demon, we would all be dead."

"I hate you guys," Casey said, stomping through the room and down the hall. Derek turned to me after she was out of sight.

"Can we go watch the stupid cartoon show?" he asked. "This is making me nauseous." I looked at him to see if he was lying, and noticed that his eyes were brighter. Fever bright.

"You're Changing again aren't you?" I asked, putting my hand to his forehead. It did feel hot, and I was surprised I hadn't felt it before.

"I'm pretty sure it's just this show making me sick," he said in a serious tone, but his eyes said he was joking.

"That means yes," I said, getting off the couch and holding out my hand. "Come on, let's find you a nice clearing before night fall." He took my hand and pretended like I actually pulled him up, when of course he did all the work.

"Wait where are you going?" James said, finally looking away from the TV.

"To find a place for Derek to Change later," I said, already heading towards the stairs.

"Whoa!" James yelled, jumping up and sprinting over to block the stairs. "Dude you've already Changed?"

"Yup, being genetically altered does all kinds of weird stuff to supposed time frames," Derek said.

"Oh my God that's awesome! Can I come watch? Dad never lets me come with him."

"No," I said quickly, trying to get around him. "It's not something most people want to see, ask Simon and Tori."

"The sounds were bad enough," Simon said. "No offense bro."

"And the fact that he ended up naked," Tori said, shuddering. "I didn't even see him and it gave me nightmares."

"Shut up Tori," I said defensively before turning back to James. "So no, you can't come. Now move please."

"Fine," James said, sounding upset, and stepped aside. Derek and I went down the stairs.

"So can we stop watching Project Runway?" he asked.

"You can do whatever you want with or without me," I said. "But I'm still watching it."

"So you'd leave me alone with Casey? The crazy one?"

"I wouldn't say crazy, just eccentric. And if you want to avoid Project Runway then yes."

"Well you just better hope she doesn't have a fit and starts throwing things."

"Nothing's going to hurt you that she throws, she's just a shaman. Although it might be a good idea for you to get some sleep before tonight."

"Then you need some too, you'd be up with me."

"Maybe," I said. "So do you want to tell Kit or Frank? They might be able to help."

"You're all the help I need," he said. _AAAWWWWWW! _And I bet you can guess what happened next. Yup, I kissed him in the middle of the stairwell, and then Aunt Lauren turned the corner.

"Chloe!" she yelled, making me and Derek jump apart and flatten ourselves against opposite walls. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

"If I say no, will you get mad?" I asked, suddenly annoyed. "We were kind of going to do something."

"I can see that," she said with a hint of anger behind her otherwise calm tone. "But I wasn't really giving you a choice."

"Go ahead," Derek said. "We go look later."

"But-"

"Chloe, we'll do it later," he said before heading back up the stairs, leaving me alone with my aunt.

"Let's go to my room," she said, taking my hand and pulling me up the stairs. _Oh yay, let the lecture begin. _And sure enough, as soon as she shut the door behind us, she turned to me saying, "First of all, do I even want to know what you guys were planning to do?"

"Derek's Changing tonight," I said irately, really pissed off at what she was implying. "We were going to go find a clearing for him."

"And instead I found you kissing him on the stairs."

"Well he's my boyfriend, I have a right to kiss him if I want."

"Maybe, but that doesn't mean you should be, he's-"

"If you say dangerous I'm leaving right now," I snapped. "Because he's not, at all. Not in the tiniest bit."

"He's a werewolf Chloe, they're all dangerous."

"Are you calling Frank dangerous? Or James? He might be a little out there but the worst he could do to anyone is annoy them to death." That made her pause. "See, you agree. They aren't any more dangerous than the rest of us, Derek included." She stayed silent a few seconds.

"Still, the genetic modification…"

"He seems perfectly fine to me. And if you ask Frank I bet he would say the same, Derek's a perfectly normal werewolf. What's your problem with Derek anyway? You're still holding a grudge against him from Lyle House?" She stayed silent again, and that made me really angry. "Well that's too bad, because you're not my mother! It's not your job to decide who I can date!" I hadn't realized how loud I had been yelling those words and how much anger I put behind them until they came out of my mouth.

"I'm sorry," I said quickly, instantly regretting lashing out like that. "It's just… I really like Derek and I wish you would just trust my judgment and support me." She stayed silent for about a minute.

"I do trust you Chloe," she says finally. "It's him I don't trust."

"Well I do. I trust Derek more than anyone, even you. He's never lied to me and trusts me no matter what stupid thing I've done. And he was willing to put his life before everyone else's safety. So give me a reason why I shouldn't trust him." She thought for another minute.

"I can't," she said, smiling. "I'm just worried about my niece and that worry is making blind to everything you just said. I guess Derek is a good guy. I'm sorry Chloe."

"So does that mean you approve now?" I asked, not getting my hopes up.

"Maybe," she said thinking. "As long as I don't need to give you _The Talk_."

"NO!" I shouted, instantly backing up a few feet. "You won't have to!"

"You're sure?"

"Yes completely positive, can I go now?"

"I guess," she said. I hugged her before running out of the room to find Derek. He wasn't down in the TV room with everyone and he wasn't with Casey watching her stupid cartoon show. Since he went back upstairs, the only place he could be was his room. And he was there, still shirtless lying on his bed like he was trying to fall asleep. He glanced towards the door when I came in and then fell back onto the bed.

"I would have thought it would be a longer conversation," he said.

"Me too," I replied, walking over and lying down next to him. "Although you would be surprised about what happened."

"Oh really?" he asked, turning his head to face me.

"Yeah, she actually approves of us now." He bolted into a sitting position.

"Seriously?" he asked, completely shocked.

"Yeah." He laid back down

"What'd you do to convince her?"

"Ask her to give me a reason not to trust you," I answered. I kissed him quickly before saying, "And she couldn't." He smiled before kissing me again. For the first few seconds, I expected someone to walk in, like always. But then I thought, s_crew it_, and kissed him back more fiercely than, well ever. Derek seemed a little surprised at first, then I felt him smile through our kiss and kissed me back with the same intensity. After another minute, he hesitantly shifted so that he was hovering on top of me.

Then…. loud foot falls and yelling came down the hall.

"Charlie!" James yelled. "Don't you dare touch my Little House collection!" **(Anyone else get the joke?)**

"Every fucking time," Derek muttered, rolling off of me and lying flat on his back, rubbing his face.

"I know," I said, standing up. "Come on, let's go find that clearing."

"But I'm tired," Derek whined, putting a pillow over his face.

"You want to find one in the dark when you're about to Change?" I asked, grabbing the pillow then throwing it at him. "Suck it up, be a man."

"Fine, but I refuse to watch Project Runway afterwards," he said, standing up next to me.

"Deal." I grabbed his hand and we walked out of the room. Charlie and James were wrestling in the middle of the hallway.

"Give. Me. It!" James yelled, trying to pin Charlie to the ground but it looked like he got shocked every time he did and jerked back a little each time.

"I want to watch it!" Charlie said, gripping what looked like a DVD box tightly.

"What the hell are you guys doing?" Derek asked. James looked up.

"Charlie took one of my Little House on the Prairie DVDs and won't give it back!" he whined, sounding exactly like a five year old who didn't get their way.

"Sucks for you," Derek said, taking advantage of the lack of flailing arms to pull me past them. Once we were on the stairs he whispered, "Do you think he seriously likes Little House on the Prairie?"

"Who James?" Julie asked, turning into the stairwell. "Yeah, he had mono a few years ago and our cable was out so for two months all he could watch was one channel which had Little House reruns."

"Wow," I said. "That's sad."

"You weren't there when he quoted it for months afterwards. The most annoying thing ever I swear."

"That would be annoying," Derek said as he started pulling me back down the stairs. "Come on Chloe."

"Bye," I said, looking back up the stairs at Julie and waving with my free hand. She smiled before disappearing down the third floor hallway. Then I turned back to Derek. "You never did answer my question from earlier."

"And what question was that?"

"If you wanted to tell Kit or Frank."

"Oh… I don't care. I mean they should probably know, but I don't want them there or anything."

"Okay, then we'll tell them on our way out."

"And I'll get a snack." I elbowed him before we reached the bottom of the stairs and turned towards the kitchen, which was usually the adult-hangout-area. Sure enough, Kit and Frank were sitting at the kitchen table, discussing something that no one knew or cared about.

"Hey kids," Kit said, looking up from the notepads in front of him.

"Hi," I said, letting Derek go to the pantry. "Uh… Derek's going to Change again tonight, so we're going to go find a clearing for him. Just thought we'd let you know."

"Change?" Frank said. "Why did no one tell me?"

"We've been here barely a day Frank," Kit said. "Doesn't really leave us time to tell you everything about everyone."

"Yeah," I said. "And I'm guessing you never told him that I've raised countless dead things."

"Countless?" Kit said, looking confused. Frank just looked surprised.

"Actually," Derek said, coming up behind me with a bag of Tostitos. "We never told him about any of the animals."

"Oh… crap," I said. "Well then, I've made a couple dozen zombie animals."

"Zombie animals?" Miles said, coming into the kitchen and hopping onto the counter. "That sounds fun, what about them?"

"You didn't hear any of the rest of that sentence?" Derek asked.

"No, usually I tune out conversations and only hear something that I'm interested in, like zombies, food, Star Wars, and duct tape. Anyway what was the sentence about?"

"How I've raised a dozen dead things." Miles's jaw dropped.

"Seriously?" he asked. When I nodded he started smiling. "I'd heard you guys were powerful, but not _that _powerful. I've only raised one thing above a bug, and that was my pet gecko Vincent. I had him for three years alive and then kept him for a year dead, but after that he was practically just bones and I had to let him go. I miss little Vincent." We all just stared at him.

"Oookaaay," I said, slightly freaked out. "That's a great story. Anyway, back on topic, Derek's Changing tonight and we'd just thought we'd let you know."

"Okay, you want us to come with you Der?" Kit asked.

"No, I'll be fine with just Chloe," he said, taking my hand. I looked up at him and smiled.

"Okay," Frank said. "But if you don't want one of us to go with you then you have I have to ask you some stuff."

"Sure," Derek said. Frank got up from the table and motioned for Derek to follow him.

"Be right back," he said, squeezing my hand and handing me the Tostitos bag before following Frank out of the room.

"Aww," Miles said. "Would you be mad if I said puppy love is adorable?"

"Yes," I said, blushing.

"Why? Casey thinks it's funny."

"Well Casey isn't exactly what you'd call 'normal.'"

"I heard that!" Casey said, skipping into the room and smiling like an idiot. "Guess what?"

"You just saw 23 purple flying monkeys fly in and carry Charlie off to make him their king?" Miles asked excitedly.

"Uh… no…." Casey said, looking at Miles weirdly.

"Damn, that would have been awesome," Miles said, shrugging.

"Yeah you're weird," Casey said quickly before turning back to me and Kit. "Anyway, on Total Drama World Tour they found Duncan in London which of course made me yell holy crap and do a little happy dance. Then, and this is the best part, at the very end of the episode Gwen and Duncan kissed in the bathroom and Tyler saw them and I started screaming holy shit over and over again but then Claire heard me and told me I wasn't allowed to watch TV for the rest of the day because I swore. But really why wouldn't you scream some swear words at that?"

"Um… That's nice," Miles said. "You're weird."

"Thank you very much," she said, walking into the pantry and grabbing a Chip Ahoy bag/box thingy. "So you want to take me to Cedar Point? We've only used our passes like four times this year and I have nothing better to do."

"Isn't that like the biggest amusement park in the country or something?" Kit asked.

"Not the biggest," Casey said through a mouthful of cookies. "But it has the most coasters. And it's 23 minutes away, so we got passes. So please Miles? Please please please?"

"No I'm tired," Miles said. "And we're doing a shopping trip tomorrow so we have to be up by 11. Maybe Thursday."

"But three days is too _loooong_," Casey whined.

"To flippen bad," he said, hopping off the counter and turning to face me. "Frank says we're going to start doing some training lessons, but since you're more powerful than me, I'm not sure how that's gonna work without you creating some fluffy little zombie. You want to start on Wednesday?"

"Uh… sure," I said.

"Cool. Well then, I'm going to go… Watch some horror movie in my room."

"Can I come with?" Casey asked. "You know how I love my horror."

"You hate being in my room," Miles said.

"Exactly, that way Claire won't look there. That is as long as no one tells." She looked at me and Kit.

"I'm not going to say anything," I said. "Kit?"

"Not a word," he said.

"Yay," Casey said. "Come on ghosty boy." They left the room leaving me with Kit.

"So is everyone else getting training too?" I asked him.

"You could say that," he said. "Although there isn't much Derek has to train for. But Simon and Tori are going to work with me on some spells while we're here." The way he said the names of his kids was weird, with some uncertainty.

"Uh Kit," I said, wondering if I should ask him about telling Simon and Tori now. "About Simon and Tori, I-" I was cut off when Frank and Derek came back into the room. "Never mind."

"Hey," Derek said, coming over and taking the chips back. "Ready?"

"Yeah," I said. "Let's go, bye." We left the kitchen and then the house and headed towards forest. "So what he'd ask you?"

"Just a bunch of random crap," he said. "Like how many times I had Changed, if I felt in control when I was in wolf form, what exactly happened when I Changed, blah blah blah."

"Ooh, cranky."

"Just pissed. I don't need advice from people, I can handle myself."

"Maybe that's true," I said. We had now entered to forest and were walking on a narrow path. "But you do sometimes need to take other people's ideas into consideration. Sometimes they're better than yours."

"Yeah, rarely."

"Shut up," I said, elbowing him. "But speaking of advice, you know you're going to have to do training?"

"Yeah Frank told me. And I'm reeeeally looking forward to it."

"Oh come on, can't you at least pretend to like people?"

"I do like him, I just don't want to throw weights around all day."

"That's what you're doing? That sucks."

"Not _just _that. He said he'd teach me some punches and other shit, and he offered to help me work on 'Phasing in and out of wolf form' but I told him I'd just work on that with you during Changes."

"Okay," I said. We walked for another few minutes in silence, both of us eating chips, before we finally reached a clearing. It was decent sized, big enough for Derek to run around in easily but not too large. "This good?"

"Sure," he said, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist. I turned around to face him, putting my arms around his neck.

"So," I said. "What do you want to do until you Change?"

"I think I can think of a few things," he said before kissing me.

Derek and I left the clearing around 30 minutes later, and let's just say that we got to second base… **(Sorry guys, 14 year old here who doesn't like writing about people making out, not that I have a problem with it, I just suck at it. And really, if you want a make out scene, go to an M rated story, all of them have several.) **Once inside, we headed upstairs to watch some more TV, which seemed to be the only thing people wanted to do here. Luckily for Derek, Project Runway wasn't on any more, and only James, Miles, Simon, and Casey were in the room watching some movie.

"Hey," Simon said, turning around as he heard us come in. "We're watching The Ring, want to join us?"

"Yes," I said, walking towards the couch. "I've wanted to see that movie for a while."

"You can only watch it if you get snacks for everyone," Miles said. "I'm hungry."

"Then get your own food," Casey said, whipping a pillow at him. "You guys can watch it without doing anything for anyone, particularly Miles. That is as long as you help hide me if Claire comes up here."

"Sure," I said, pulling Derek onto one of the couches. Turns out The Ring is really stupid. It's just this weird video that makes you able to pull a fly out of the TV and a creepy kid who doesn't like horses.

"Okay, I really don't get that movie," James said. "Why exactly did the horse commit suicide?"

"I don't know," Simon said. "Why did the kid not stop even though her secret had been found out?"

"It's a stupid movie," Derek said. "Those never have any answers to the questions you really want to know."

"Well said Derek," Casey said. She looked at her watch. "And it's only 6:15. Yay." She went to go take the movie out of the player and as she was putting it in the box she spun around with an excited look on her face. "Okay, so Derek, your Changes are like really late at night, or really early in the morning right?"

"Uh… Yeah," he said cautiously. "Why?"

"Who wants to pull an all-nighter?" she yelled, putting her hand above her head and waving it enthusiastically. Only James raised his hand. "Aw come on! What's wrong with you people?"

"We've been sleeping in hotels for a week," I said. "Those are not fun to sleep in. And I want to sleep as much as I can before Derek Changes."

"Butt trumpet," she said before stomping out of the room.

"Um… Why did she just call me a butt trumpet?" I asked. "Or do I even want to know?"

"A Very Potter Musical. Wait no, it was a Very Potter Sequel," Miles said.

"Okay then," Simon said, standing up. "I think I'm going to go play some COD." **(That's Call of Duty for anyone who doesn't know, and I only know that because half the guys at my school have "COD fever" and my dad plays it) **

"Hey Simon," I asked. He turned back to face me. "Where's Tori?"

"I think she was gushing over Julie's makeup collection," he said before heading down the hall.

"Okay I'm not going to go look for her then," I said. James got up saying that he was also going to play COD while Miles turned on Little People Big World. Towards the end of the episode, a loud scream of "CHARLIE!" sounded, followed by loud running footsteps.

"Block the stairs!" an angry voice which was unmistakably Casey's yelled. Two seconds later, James sprinted through room and to the stairs, where there was immediately a loud thump and a couple swears from Charlie. I looked up at Derek.

"Should we see what he did that made Casey so mad?"

"Might as well," he said, standing up and holding a hand out for me. I took it and we headed towards the stairs. Casey was just reaching the second floor landing, where James was sitting on Charlie.

"Thank you Jimmy," she said, kissing him. "Now get off the evil Brit." James jumped up and Charlie quickly rolled over and held out a book called Clockwork Angel. **(Awesome book peeps, go read it. Will is almost as awesome as Jace.)**

"Please don't kill me," he said as Casey snatched the book away from him. She carefully looked at the book to see if it was damaged before kicking him in the shoulder.

"I told you never to touch my books!" she yelled, kicking him again. "You're just lucky this wasn't a Mortal Instruments book, I would have kicked you somewhere else."

"I still don't get why you won't let me read one of your 200 books," Charlie said, standing up. "Some of them actually sound interesting."

"Well if you ask and only read in my room then maybe you could," Casey said. "And I'm reading this book right now, so you aren't allowed to touch it."

"Well fine, I don't want to read your stupid angel book anyway. I'm going to go play Boggle." He stomped down the stairs, with James following him afterwards. I turned to Casey, who was hugging her book.

"Do you actually have 200 books?" I asked excitedly, I needed some new reading material.

"No, only like 80," Casey said. "Why? You looking for something to read?"

"Yes actually, can I borrow something?"

"As long as you keep it in one room other than my room and swear not to eat around it or let anyone touch it," she said, glaring at me.

"Uh… sure, I promise."

"Ok, come on then." She started heading back upstairs before turning back to face Derek. "If you want something to read, there's some informative supernatural books in the basement, which is where I suggest reading other than my room. I doubt you like any fantasy vampire or demon books."

"You're right about that," Derek said. He looked down to me. "Meet you down there?"

"Sure," I said. I was surprised when he leaned down and kissed me quickly before heading down the stairs. I still wasn't used to actually being able to display any sort of affection in public.

"Aww, you guys are cute," Casey said. "But hurry up, I need to finish this book. Jem was about to tell Tessa about how he got to London."

"Uh, that's nice." I followed her up the stairs and to the left hallway. Her room was about the same as mine, except with a few added things, two more book shelves, filled with books, some souveniry things, and three giant posters of Leonardo DiCaprio, all as Jack from Titanic.

"Uh, what's with the posters?" I asked, walking over to the closest one and looking at it.

"I love Leo!" Casey cried, running to another poster and hugging it, if it's possible to hug a wall. "It started out as an inside joke with one of my friends a few weeks before I my dad sent me here. And now I'm just completely obsessed. I know basically everything about him."

"That's nice," I said again because it was the only thing you could really say about Casey's interests. I walked towards one of the shelves and began looking. After a minute, I saw the Hunger Games, and then Mockingjay, which I had yet to read. I took it out and held it up. "Can I take this?"

"Sure, but it was the worst book I've read for fun in years. Are you a Gale or Peeta fan?"

"Peeta."

"God, why does no one else like Gale? Peeta's just a one-legged bread boy who should have died in the first book. Julie even had the nerve to call Gale a hillbilly! She just started the first book. Anyway, you'll hate the book either way. I am a diehard Gale fan, and I threw the book across the room and stomped on it. And you saw what I did to Charlie for touching my book, so you know I never do that. But I have a friend who is an even harder diehard Peeta fan and she did the same thing. So yeah, you'll hate the evil book."

"Okay, well I think I'll read it anyway," I said, walking towards the door. "I'll bring it back when I'm done."

"K," Casey said, already spread out on her bed reading. I hurried down to the first floor and then went towards the place where I thought the basement was. Surprisingly, I was right, and found the second set of stairs easily. I went down to find Derek already on a couch reading something. I walked over and sat on the opposite side of the couch he was on, laying my legs over his. "So what are you reading about?"

"Necromancers," he said, looking up and giving me a half grin. "As surprised as you might be to hear this, I actually don't know all that much about them. And I don't say you because you aren't exactly like other necros."

"So I've heard," I said, leaning back against the arm of the couch. "Tell me if you find anything interesting."

We wound reading until 10 without a break before Derek's stomach started rumbling and made us realize how late it was. We went upstairs and got dinner, where Derek demonstrated his amazing ability to make mac and cheese, before heading back to the basement. Derek got was starting to have muscle spasms by then, and decided he would try to get as much sleep in as possible before he was ready to Change. I would have done the same, except I had just got to the part when Peeta's getting beat up and I was excited. I was another 150 pages in when Derek sat up from the couch across from me. His eyes were really bright and he was covered in sweat.

"You ready?" I asked, putting down the book. He simply nodded, already scratching at his arm. He stood up, wincing, and I saw a huge ripple go through his whole right arm. "We better get outside." I took his hand and we headed back upstairs. On the way up, I got a glimpse at his watch and saw that it was 1:00. I was surprised when we came across James and Casey in the kitchen, drinking caffeinated Pepsi. Seeing us, James jumped up.

"Please let me come with!" he whisper-yelled.

"No," I said, quickly pulling Derek through the room towards the back door. "Why are you even up anyway?"

"Casey and I are night owls, I mean night people. She doesn't like to use the term 'night owl.' And I get hungry at night so I come down here."

"Okay then, now good bye James." We were now at the back door and I was putting on the shoes Derek and I had left there earlier.

"But-"

"James," Casey said, leaning against a doorway. "Look at Derek, do you seriously think he wants you around right now? You're just going to annoy him. Let them leave."

"Thank you Casey," I said, opening the door and leading Derek out into the night. We reached the clearing quickly, and got Derek undressed and onto the ground without the Change starting.

"It should be easier this time," I said, already rubbing his shoulders. "Shouldn't it?"

"That's what Frank said," Derek panted. "But who knows with the modifications."

"I do," I said. He looked up and smiled before his body jackknifed in that now familiar way. He cried out and dropped his head back down. This time, there was no puking and only about five jackknifing incidents. In less than five minutes, he was that gorgeous black wolf again. I smiled.

"Told you it would be easier." He grunted before sitting up shakily. After about a minute, he stood up and started walking around the clearing. He started running after a while, becoming a black blur for almost ten minutes. Once we has done, he trotted back over to me and lay down, panting. I reached over and scratched his head. "Did I ever tell you what an adorable wolf you make?" He licked my hand gently before dropping his head onto the ground and closing his eyes. Within a minute he was asleep. Sighing, I lay down next to his, with my head on his shoulder. Soon after I was asleep as well.

I woke up to a persistent beeping. I bolted into a sitting position, realizing I was still in the clearing with Derek already on his feet, still a wolf. His ears were twitching and swiveling around, trying to find the source of the noise. Finally, his gaze settled on the lump of his sweatpants. I staggered up and ran towards them. I grabbed them lifted them up. A blinking, beeping thing fell onto the ground. Picking it up, I realized it was Derek's watch, an alarm going off. I pressed the stop button and was rewarded by silence.

"Why exactly did you have an alarm set for 2:30?" I asked Derek. He shrugged, if wolves can shrug and walked over to me. I absently scratched his head as I looked down at him. "So, as long as we're up, you want to head inside. You haven't thrown up for the past two Changes, so I think you'll be fine changing back inside." When he looked up and I saw his face, I quickly added, "We'll stay in the basement so no one will here you. I just think it'll be more comfortable for both of us inside." He made an agreeing sound and we started back inside. I was surprised when we left the woods and I saw that the lights were still on in the back hall and kitchen. "Oh my God. Do they ever go to bed?" Derek made an annoyed sounding grunt as we reached the door. I looked down at him. "Okay, let's try to be really quiet and maybe they won't hear us." He licked my hand in agreement, but I saw doubt in his eyes. Sighing I opened the door and we walked through. Derek's nails clicked loudly on the tile, making me wince. We walked a few more feet before Casey's voice said, "Chloe? Derek? Is that you?" _Damn._

"Yeah," I said, sighing. We walked into the kitchen, only to see that Casey was sitting alone at the table. She had a laptop running and a bag of Cheeto puffs right next to her. "Where's James?"

"He went to bed," she said. She saw my look of relief and smiled. "I know, he's annoying when he doesn't get what he wants. Although he's- Is that Derek?" She had seen Derek, who had walked out from behind me.

"Yeah," I said, petting his back.

"Aww, Derek you're adorable!" she cried, jumping out of her chair and running over to us. She was already kneeling by Derek before she stopped and looked up at me. "Do you care if I pet him? He's still you're boyfriend." I laughed.

"I don't care, but he might. Derek?" Derek grumbled amusingly. "Yeah go ahead." Casey gave a little shriek and practically attacked Derek.

"Sorry," she said, rubbing his ears. "I just haven't seen a dog like animal in months. And I miss my puppy back home. He was a wimpy little goldendoodle who was afraid of everything, even cardboard. So he was nothing like you Derek." She stood back up then. "Okay, I'm done. Sorry again."

"As long as he's in wolf form I don't care," I said. "Well we're going to go to the basement. See you in the morning."

"Sure," she said, going back to her laptop. Derek and I went back to the basement. He hopped up onto the same couch we were on last time, and I followed. He plopped down on one end, with his head on the arm. I lay against him again. Even as a wolf, he made a great pillow.

"Try to warn me before you're ready to Change back," I said, massaging one of his paws. "I'd prefer not to get kicked." When he didn't respond, I looked up and realized he hadn't heard me, because he was already asleep.

**Sooo…. Worth the wait? Probably not. Again, I am so sorry about not updating in forever. I really will try to update as soon as possible, but I have no idea when that will be. Okay, so TDWD is like one of the best shows on television. It's so funny and I am in love with Duncan, who's the 2****nd**** coolest cartoon ever, after Kevin Levin from Ben 10. He reminds me of Christian from Vampire Academy, and really, how can you not love that boy? And to anyone to who likes Project Runway, what the hell is wrong with you people? It's like the stupidest show ever and the only reason to watch it is the funny gay people. My sister told me about the one guy from this season, Casanova I think, and I started cracking up. I would actually have watched the show to make fun of that guy! Who's happy for Chlerek? Me! But don't expect any huge make out scenes okay? Seriously, I suck at them. I spent days trying to make one for the clearing, and it was just a bunch of crap. So no, there will not be any intense making out actually written, although possibly implied, in this story, so if that's why you're reading this, go try an M story. And for any of you who are horror fans, never watch The Ring unless you want to waste two perfectly good hours on a terrible movie that makes no sense. As for the Little House on the Prairie thing, Lost joke. Anyway, Leonardo DiCaprio is the best actor in the world for sure, and possibly the greatest person in the world. I love him! My friends and sister are having a Leo marathon on his birthday, November 11****th****. It will be epic. Cedar Point, I'm just in love with that place and they will go there. And Mockingjay was the worst book I've read in a really long time willingly. The first third was awesome, but then the rest was so aggravating. I did exactly what Casey did when I finished, and left the book there for a week. Seriously, I hated that evil book. And it officially made me hate Peeta. He's a giant butt trumpet and, as my sister says, a stupid, useless, legless, bread boy that no one could ever love. So, I shall (Did I seriously just say shall?) attempt to update as soon as possible, but don't expect anything sooner than two weeks please, I've just have so much stuff to do. Adios mi amigos! (I'm learning Spanish, and I'm awesome!)**

**P.S. Watch Titanic this Friday on TNT at 7 PM my time, which is Central if any of you are wondering.**


	4. Creepy Tights and Dorky Capes

**HAPPY BIRTHDAY LEONARDO DICAPRIO! Yes it's his birthday, and he's 36. My friends and I had a marathon for him, which wound up just being cake with 2 of the 3 hours of Blood Diamond, with commercials, which was an awesome movie. Sorry for the giant delay people, homework, plus getting an iPod touch, plus YouTube obsession, plus rereading the 7****th**** Harry Potter, equal little free time. I'm really sorry guys. So, here's the chapter, which is super long and pretty crappy in my opinion. Celebrate Leo's B-Day! Don't own Darkest Powers yet again and I apologize for the usual. Also, I was rushing the last parts of this so if anything doesn't make sense, I'm sorry.**

"OH MY GOD!" Casey screamed, waking me up. It took me a few seconds to register the fact that I was still in the basement, lying against Derek on the couch. He'd Changed back around 3 and we decided to just sleep in the basement instead of risking anyone waking up while we were going upstairs. "Please tell me he has pants on!"

"What are- Of course he has pants on," I said, still a little dazed. "What time is it?"

"10:30," Casey said, uncovering her eyes and coming farther into the room. "We have to leave for our weekly shopping trip at 12, so I'm supposed to tell you guys. And we need to be finished by 7, so don't get obsessive over finding a perfect pair of shoes or any other shit."

"Okay…" Derek said, sitting up, making me do the same. "Why exactly do we have to be back by 7?"

"'Cause Titanic is on at 7," Casey said before running back up the stairs.

"She does not look like the kind of person who likes Titanic," Derek mumbled.

"Yeah, well you should have seen her three posters of Leonardo DiCaprio in the Titanic in her room." He looked down at me, shocked. "I know, and she hugged one."

"Okay… Creepy obsessive fan girl," he said, standing up and offering me a hand.

"I think so," I said, letting him pull me up. But instead of letting me go, he pulled me close to him and kissed me.

"And I can definitely get used to being able to do that any time," he said after drawing back, grinning.

"So could I, but I really don't think we should push our luck all that much for a while. Aunt Lauren could still change her mind at any time."

"Good point." Still, he kissed me again, a little longer this time. "That should hold me for a few hours." I elbowed him, just making him smile again, and headed back upstairs.

"Food or new clothes first?" I asked.

"Let's go for clothes, and a shower," he said, steering us to the stairs. Surprisingly, no one passed us on our way to our rooms, and the only evidence of anyone around were some explosion noises coming from the video game room. We both went our separate ways once we reached our rooms. I took a quick shower and put on some clothes, realizing I only had three outfits. I definitely needed this shopping trip. Then I headed across the hall to Derek's room, both hoping he was and wasn't still in towel. I knocked on the door and he opened it three seconds later, hair still wet and with pants on, but still no shirt.

"Hey," he said, opening the door wider to let me in. I did and went to sit on the desk. Derek went over to his backpack and picked up a shirt. He held it up. "Do you think I'm allowed to wear one if we have to leave the house?"

"I don't know, I kind of like it," I said, glancing at his beautiful chest. I looked back up at his face and grinned. "But yeah, I think you could wear a shirt." He pulled it on.

"Okay," he said. "Can we go eat now?" I sighed.

"Always the hungry one," I said, smiling up at him. "Sure." We left his room and went down the first flight of stairs, running into Tori on the second floor.

"Hey guys!" she said happily. "Am I the only one excited for this shopping trip?"

"Excited, yes. Happy to finally be going on a real one, no," I said. "I need this big time."

"Thank you Chloe," Tori said, following us downstairs. She started talking about all the things she was going to get, and I tuned her out, not really caring. Derek looked relieved when we go to the kitchen, where there was food and Claire, Kit, Aunt Lauren, and Julie.

"Oh good, you're up," Kit said, looking up from his newspaper. I saw Aunt Lauren glance at my hand, which was holding Derek's, before looking away quickly. "There's doughnuts on the counter."

"I like doughnuts," Derek said, wandering towards the three boxes Kit had pointed to.

"Chloe, Tori," Claire said. "We're giving you each $200 for clothes. There's a mall that has pretty much any store you want a couple minutes away, so you can go and get whatever you want, as long as you stay with one of our kids. They all have phones so we can make sure you're all okay."

"Speaking of phones," Aunt Lauren said. "I'm going to get some for the rest of you."

"Aunt Lauren-" I began but she but me off.

"Chloe, it's fine. You're going to need them, whether it's just something like this or a serious problem. But you can only use them for talking to someone who is currently at this house." She looked warningly at Tori.

"What?" she said. "Just because I'm the only one who had a real life doesn't mean that I'm going to go around texting all my old friends. I know we can't risk anything like that."

"Thanks Tori," I said sarcastically. She looked at me.

"What? Like you spent five hours a day texting. I did."

"No, I spent like an hour texting and the rest of the day watching movies."

"Well that's just great for you."

"Hey Tori," Derek said. She looked over at him. "Shut the hell up." She glared at him before grabbing a doughnut and taking a huge bite.

"Anyway," Kit said. "Just make sure you guys get a good backpack or something, and don't buy more than you can fit in that bag. You'll be living out of it again once we leave here."

"That's a happy thought," I said, picking up a doughnut of my own. I finished a second then told everyone I was going to go finish Mockingjay and went back to the basement. After a couple minutes, Derek came down and joined me on the couch.

"No offense Der," I said. "But I'm not talking until I finish this book."

"Fine with me," he said, picking up the necromancer book he had yesterday. We sat and read silently for like 30 minutes until I started crying and Derek looked up, worried.

"I hate this book," I said in response to his look. He nodded and went back to reading. **(**_**Spoiler! Don't read if you haven't read Mockingjay!**_** For anyone who's wondering, she was crying at the part where they told you Annie had Finnick's kid. I almost started sobbing then and had to restrain myself from throwing the book then! I loved Finnick! It was all Peeta's fault he died. **_**Spoiler over**_**.)**

I finished the book a few minutes later and went to go find Casey. I saw that it was 11:42, so we had 15 minutes. I found Casey exactly the same way I had left her last night, lying half on half off her bed with at book. James was also there, playing with a weird beeping thing.

"What's that?" I asked, sitting on her desk.

"I don't know," James said, pressing buttons rapidly. "Something Charlie found somewhere. You move fishies around. Although I have no idea what the fishies are supposed to do." There was a dying like noise and James swore. "Apparently not touch the purple pizza thing though."

"Okay then…" I said, turning to Casey and holding out the book. "Finished." She looked up and yelled "AAAAHHHH!" She jumped off her bed and took the book, looked at it for any damage, and then threw it on the ground. Then she looked back at me. "You did hate it right?"

"Not the whole book itself, just the ending. It was so stupid! Almost everyone died and then nothing was explained…" We started a really enthusiastic conversation about the book, which was mostly Casey yelling at me why I shouldn't like Peeta, lasting until Claire called us down to leave. Even on the way downstairs, Casey was still saying how Peeta was stupid.

"Seriously, he's too nice! I will admit that in the first two books I couldn't hate him, when he pulled out that locket in the second Games, I was just like 'AWW.' But that was the last aww part involving him. He's just a stupid, brainwashed, legless, bread boy who should just drown in a lake twice, then that lake should be bombed 23 times."

"Why does he have to die?" I asked. "I don't want Gale to die."

"Yeah but everyone likes Gale. I _hate _Peeta. So therefore, he should drown in a lake twice and-"

"Yeah I got that part," I said quickly before she could start ranting again. She and James led the way to the garage, where three cars, the van Kit had gotten from somewhere, a Town and Country mini-van, a Nissan Cube. **(I love mini-vans, even if they usually are for just families with little kids. They have everything and are comfortable! Ours just died and we had to get rid of it, so now we're stuck with the giant Expedition, with the back seat that nobody can sit in without getting car sick or being practically in the fetal position. And I love the Cube!) **Everyone was already outside, Miles in the driver's seat of the Cube and Charlie with shotgun.

"Nose goes for the Cube!" Casey shouted, immediately touching her nose. James was next followed by Derek, who didn't seem to get what he was volunteering for.

"Damn," Simon said, lowering his hand. "I call riding back in it."

"No we're keeping the same seating arrangements," Claire said. "We don't want any power duels in the parking lot."

"So not fair," Simon muttered before going into Kit's van. I wound up being in the mini-van with Claire, Frank, and Tori. During the 20 minute ride, Tori told me _again_ what she was going to get, and I tuned her out yet again. Instead, I thought about what I needed, so I could be done as soon as possible, I always hated clothes shopping.

We parked the cars side by side by side towards the back of the parking lot, it was pretty packed. When we got out, Claire gave each of us our money, the house kids only got $75, and we started walking towards the mall. Derek caught up to me soon after.

"Never get yourself stuck in a car with James, Charlie, Casey, and Miles," he muttered, taking my hand.

"How bad was it?"

"They started singing within two minutes. And then didn't shut up until we pulled in that spot."

"Aw, poor you," I said sarcastically as we walked inside. The adults split apart from the rest of us as soon as we walked through the door. Tori suggested that we go to the sports store first to get some nice backpacks and then stuff all our stuff in there to make sure it all fits. James led us to a Dick's and to the backpack section towards the back of the first floor. He, and Casey went to go look at camping stuff while the rest of us started looking. All of us except Tori found something pretty quickly, me with a blue "technical pack," Simon with a bright orange JanSport, very inconspicuous, and Derek with a plain black Colombia. Charlie and Julie had to help Tori find just the perfect one, and 20 minutes later, she had a pink and gray North Face. We paid for our packs, found Casey and James hiding in a tent, and then left Dick's.

"Okay," Julie said. "I'm guessing the guys don't want to go on our extensive shopping trip, so bye."

"Yeah bye," Casey said, immediately following the guys.

"She's shopping with them?" Tori asked, astonished.

"She hates shopping, with a passion," Julie said, walking towards an escalator. "So she usually goes with the guys just to be done quicker."

"Well that's stupid," Tori said.

"Makes sense to me," I muttered at I stepped onto the escalator behind her.

Three hours later, I had two pairs of jeans, a few pairs of shorts, some real PJs, a bunch of shirts, a bathing suit for the lake, a jacket, and a new pair of gym shoes. **(Yes I know it is a weird selection of clothes but it's like May or something so it's not too hot for jeans and like just warm enough to swim. Pretend.) **I had all that stuff within an hour, but Tori was being really stubborn, and would only buy what she thought was perfect. We were now following Julie to the food court, where Casey and the guys had apparently been for a hour.

"Hey!" Charlie shouted from across the food court when we came into sight, waving his arms and jumping up and down. "Hey guys we're over here!" Pretty much everyone in the room was staring at him or us.

"Does he always do that?" I asked Julie.

"Yep," she said, looking down as we walked over to where they were sitting. "Charlie doesn't care what people think about him, which I congratulate him on, but he expects everyone else to feel the same, so he does stuff like this every time we're out in public."

"Well I'm sorry then," I said as we reached the guys. Casey, James, and Charlie were sitting at one table with some McDonald's toys while Derek and Simon sat at the one next to them, looking bored. I immediately went and sat next to Derek, Tori and Julie following me.

"So not fun," I muttered.

"I know what you mean," he said. "But then try sitting at a table for an hour watching people play with kid toys."

"You could have done something with Simon."

"Hm… Never thought of that."

"You are a really stupid genius you know."

"Aw thanks."

"Okay, that's getting really annoying," Tori said. "What are we doing now?"

"Getting Mrs. Fields cookies," Casey said, jumping up from her seat. "Come on, get up!"

"What about all these bags?" Tori asked, looking at her huge pile.

"Carry them, build up some muscle," she said. When she saw Tori's glare, she added, "Okay fine, I'll call Miles and tell him to meet us at the cookies to put stuff in the cars. Happy?"

"Yes," Tori said, standing up. Casey led the way across the mall to the Mrs. Fields shop and we all got some cookies. Miles showed up a minute later. Casey handed him a bag of snicker doodles and we went back out to the parking lot. Since Kit's van had the biggest trunk, we stuffed everything in there.

"Miles can you take us somewhere?" Casey asked, leaning against the trunk door.

"Where would you want to go that isn't in the mall?" Tori asked.

"Oh I don't know," she said sarcastically. "Maybe a movie theater, or laser tag."

"I like laser tag," Simon said, perking up. He turned to Miles. "Can you take us to a laser tag place?"

"There won't be enough room in any of the cars."

"Yeah there will," Casey said. "If we take the van, me, Julie, Tori, and Chloe can fit in one row. Or I could just sit on James."

"Or I could drive another car," James said.

"NO!" Charlie, Casey, Julie, and Miles all yelled simultaneously.

"Oh come on, It was just that one time I got a little close the lake."

"Are you kidding?" Charlie said. "You had two wheels in the water, when the road was 20 feet away from it!"

"Okay I'm not going in a car with James driving," I said quickly.

"I second that," Simon said. Miles turned to him.

"Will your dad be okay if we take his van?" he asked. Simon nodded and Miles sighed. "Fine, I'll take you guys laser tagging. But someone has to go give my keys to Frank."

"I'll do it!" James yelled, making some people in the next row look over. Miles tossed him the keys and he started running back to the mall.

"Alright kiddies," Miles said. "Pile in."

"You know I really hate it when you call me a kid," Casey said, opening the car door.

"Yeah well I'm twice your age," he said, going around to the driver's side. "So that's to firetrucken bad."

"You are not allowed to use Ian and Anthony's substitute swear words," Casey said, jumping into the car.

"Who are Ian and Anthony?" Derek muttered as we followed Casey into the van.

"No idea," I whispered before asking Casey as I followed her to the back row.

"Only the most hilarious people on YouTube!" she yelled. "They make all these awesome videos that are just hilarious. And Anthony made some Twilight Pokémon cards that are simply smoshing." **(Yes it is supposed to smoshing, because together they made up Smosh. Go look them up guys, I guarantee you will laugh.)**

"They also have a drunk guinea pig," Charlie said. "And he's British!"

"Plus their both hot," Julie said.

"Yeah I'd buy the sexy Anthony calendar except I think James would be pissed," Casey said. **(They actually have one! The pictures were all from his Playgirl shoot, which is saying how hot he is. And the fact that Ian thought he would quit Smosh because of the shoot, best April Fool's joke ever!)**

"What would I be pissed about?" James said, running up to the car.

"Nothing!" Casey said quickly.

"That was fast," Julie said, obviously trying to cover for her.

"Yeah 'cause I have super awesome ninja speed combined with super awesome werewolf awesomeness," he said as he sat next Simon in the second row, turning around to look at Casey. "So what are we talking about?"

"Smosh," she said.

"Ah," he said before using a southern accent. "Son of a Beiber!"

"Did you say Beiber?" Tori asked as she tried to squeeze onto the back row with me, Julie, and Casey.

"No, Billy Jean said Beiber!" James shouted. "Now drive Miles!"

Miles started the car and drove away from the mall while Casey continued babbling about the Ian and Anthony guys. When we arrived at the laser tag place, Charlie was singing a song one of the guys had apparently made up about an Amish Man. **(The funniest firetrucken song ever!) **

"Okay Charlie," Miles said, pulling into a spot in the almost empty parking lot. "As much as I love hearing your little British voice sing, we're here, so shut up."

"Oh that's another thing about them!" Casey cried, taking an iPod touch from her back pocket. She touched it a few times before it said "Shut up!" really loudly. "This is the intro to all their videos!"

"Uh that's-" Derek began but was cut off by the "Shut up!" He tried to continue but the thing did it again and again. Finally he just yelled, "Make that fucking thing shut up!" through several "Shut up!"s.

"Fine mister cranky pants," Casey said, turning of her iPod. "Can we go in now?"

"Yeah hop out ya p-" Miles said but Casey screamed "If you say poofs I will kill you!" and he shut up. We then all got out and headed inside. The place was apparently also an arcade and pizza place, and there was only one group sitting at a table and a couple screaming kids in the arcade. Miles led the way to the back of the building, which was all black lights.

"Anyone have money left?" Miles said, searching his pockets as we waited for someone to come to the counter.

"Miles!" Casey yelled, glaring at him. "Do you seriously not have any money?"

"No I do," he said, pulling out a couple 20's from his back pocket. "I'm just not paying for someone who has money."

"Cheepo," Charlie said, pulling out cash from his back pocket as well. "Are we doing half hour or full hour?"

"Please do an hour," someone said. I looked up and saw a girl about our age coming around a corner and stepping behind the counter. "There's been no one here all day and it's really fun to watch you guys play."

"Lucy!" Charlie said, walking around to hug the girl. "Well my day just got 40 times better. How've you been?"

"Fine," Lucy said as Charlie released her. "Although I've been pretty bored. The only thing I've been doing is watching charlieissocoollike **(For those of you who don't know him, he's a video blogger on YouTube whose name is Charlie and he's British. And no, my Charlie is based on Charlie Pace from Lost, not Charlie McDonnell) **videos and catching up of my TDWT. Speaking of TDWT, Casey! How far have you gotten?"

"I was too annoyed waiting for Heather and Alejandro to make out so I wound up finishing the whole season last night," Casey said, practically jumping up and down. "I was up until 4! What about you?" **(apparently they already aired the whole season in Canada so they have each episode split in two available on YouTube. I did wind up staying up all night watching it too when I found them!)**

"Finished too!" Lucy yelled. "It was so stupid! Heather was such a bitch to Al it wasn't even funny. I just wanted to through her in that lava!"

"Oh my God I know! Seriously though, she is a damn good liar."

"Okay enough about Total Drama Whatever!" Charlie said, clearly annoyed.

"Sorry," Lucy said. "So how long do you guys want to go for?"

"Uh…" Charlie said, flipping through his money. "I only got 13 bucks. Miles?"

"I ain't paying for your extra time buddy," Miles said. "Anyone not have $12?" Everyone did.

"Okay," Lucy said. "How about you guys do an hour and I let you have the second half free. It's only six bucks difference anyway and no one's going to come in."

"Thanks Luce!" Charlie said, hugging her again. "Okay, code names. I'm The Flash as always."

"Yeah I know," she said, turning to the computer and typing it in. She then looked back at us. "Okay who's- Who are those people?"

"Oh, duh," Casey said. "These are some friends that are staying with us for a couple weeks. Guys this is Lucy, mine and Charlie's only friend our age here."

"Hi," Simon said. "I'm Simon. And that's Tori, my brother Derek, and Chloe." Tori and I said hi, Derek nodded.

"Nice tah meet ya," Lucy said, turning back to the computer. "So back to code names."

We got split up into three teams. I was on the red team as Lobster Face (Casey's idea **[Smosh joke]**) with Miles, who was Rambo Turtle, and Simon, who was WWBGD (What would Bear Grylls do). The blue team was Julie, as Her-min-one, James, as I'm a Belieber, and Tori, as Queen Beeeeeeeeep (Simon blurted it out before she could say anything). Then the green team was Derek, who wouldn't pick a name so Casey just said Yourself, Casey, as Sun Kim, and Charlie, who was The Flash. We paid and Lucy led us into the "briefing room" where she turned on a video that explained how to play, during which everyone besides me and Derek, who had never played, were playing with the black lights. After the video, we got our fancy vests with the guns attached to them on and headed into the arena.

There were a bunch of weird pillar things everywhere that you were supposed to hide behind, as well as a ramp that led up to some walkways and a second level above us. We all stood in front of this screen that had all our names on it as Lucy began flipping switches.

"This is just like Alien vs Predator," Simon said, looking around. Just after he spoke, blaring music started and our vests made a beepy noise and vibrated. **(This is all based from my experience with laser tagging, so if yours is different, pretend it isn't.) **Then Lucy said we got ten seconds to spread out before she let us start shooting each other and we all bolted. I ran towards the back of the first level, where I hid between this panel with a shooting hole in it and the wall. Then the vests buzzed again and said "Shields down," which meant we could start.

Almost immediately James walked past my panel humming the Mission Impossible theme really loudly. I aimed at his back and shot, surprised when my vest said "Nice hit!" The rest of that first game I just stayed in my little spot, shooting anyone not on my team who came near me and only getting shot once from a walkway. My team got first, with Miles getting the majority of our points.

After another 9 games of running around, hiding behind things, and wearing a really heavy vest, we were all exhausted and practically soaked in sweat. The building was really hot so we just left and went back to the house, with all the windows down.

"Anyone want to go swimming now that you guys have suits?" Julie asked as we got out of the car at the house.

"Yes!" Tori said enthusiastically. We all agreed to go swimming because we were all still boiling hot. I grabbed my one huge bag and headed upstairs with Derek.

"Well that was fun," I said.

"What?" Derek asked. "The shopping or the laser tag?"

"Laser tag, shopping was terrible. Remind me never to go shopping with Tori again."

"Well you should have seen Charlie, I would never guess a straight guy could be so obsessed with clothes."

"Hey that's not nice," I said, elbowing him as we got to our rooms.

"Well it's true," he said, turning to look down at me.

"Doesn't mean you have to say it. So, we should probably change now."

"Yeah, _should_," he said, leaning down to kiss me. I was just bringing my arms up to put around his neck when I heard stifled laughter down the hall. Derek and I broke apart and looked down the hallway. Charlie was standing there, trying not to crack up.

"Okay," he said once he finally got control of himself. "I would say get a room, but you guys already _have _rooms, and you just decided to stand right outside of them and make out. That's pretty funny."

"Yeah that's great Charlie," I said, rolling my eyes and turning back to Derek. I kissed him again, earning another laugh from Charlie, before saying, "See you at the lake," and heading into my room with my bags.

I put my clothes away before changing into my new blue tankini. I grabbed one of the towels in my bathroom and went into the hall and saw Derek's door was open. I checked his room and saw he wasn't in there then headed downstairs. I found a snack sized bag of Lays and then started walking towards the dock.

Once I got there, I saw everyone besides Julie was already sitting on the dock. James was in the boat doing something and Tori looked like she was setting up the water skiing stuff. Charlie was sitting at the end of the dock, his feet dangling in boiling water, which I'm guessing he was causing.

"Thanks for waiting for me Der," I said as I walked up to Derek, who was leaning against the storage shed.

"Sorry," he said, looking down at me before looking at Charlie. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Warming up the water," he said, looking over his shoulder at us.

"I thought you were a sorcerer," Tori said, still messing with the ski stuff.

"Yeah, but also half fire half demon," he said. "Mum was a fire HD, and my dad is a sorcerer. I mostly got sorcerer powers, but I got lucky and wound up getting some pyro powers as well."

"Yeah, you lucky little dirt squirrel," Casey said, bouncing on an inflatable whale. "First you're British, then you got some cool wizard powers, then you get pyro powers too! And what do I have? I get to heal people and teleport."

"Wait, you can teleport?" Simon yelled, looking as astonished as I felt. As far as I knew, that wasn't normal for shamans.

"Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that?" Casey said. Simon, Tori, Derek, and I just stared at her. "I guess not… Okay, well yeah, I was in Genesis too and got upgraded from astral projecting to teleporting. Except I suck at it and usually only do it on accident."

"Okay… and why did you not think to mention this to any of us?" I asked.

"No reason really," she said before turning to Charlie. "Is it warm yet?"

"I don't know, jump in and see," Charlie said, taking his feet out of the water and standing up.

"Fine, but you're drying me off if it's still freezing," she said before running down the dock and doing a cannonball off the end. She popped out again after a few seconds. "Okay it's fine!"

"Who wants to race me on the water ski?" Charlie said, jumping on the red one.

"Me!" I yelled, running over to the blue one. Aunt Lauren and I had gone on a business trip with my dad once to Florida and had spent two whole days on jet skis.

"Okay, you see that willow tree over there?" he asked, pointing in the vague direction of a giant tree a few hundred yards down the beach.

"Yeah."

"Good, there's a weird post thing sticking out of the water right around there. Loop around that and come back to the dock," Charlie said as he started up the jet ski. I did the same and then same and we started the race. I beat him to the pole but skidded too much on the turn so he wound up winning.

"Rematch!" I said when he finished gloating. We wound up having several rematches, with me only winning the last one, I kept skidding too much.

"Okay, I'm good," I said, pulling up to the dock and getting off. Simon, Casey, Julie, and Derek were all in the storage shed while Tori, James, and Miles were already out on the lake water skiing. Charlie started flagging them down while I headed over to the shed.

"This one's good," Casey said, picking up a foam mat and throwing it out of the building.

"What are you guys doing?" I asked as I tried to find a way to get through the mess of things on the floor.

"We're getting stuff out to race on," Julie said, throwing a boogie board on top of the raft.

"That sounds fun, can I- what is that," I said, pointing at a big ball with a hole at the end.

"The giant hamster ball," Casey said, looking over to me. "It's awesome and fun."

"Derek can you bring that out?" I asked.

"Gladly," he said, easily picking it up and making his way out of the shed.

"Thanks," I said as he dropped it next to me. "You want to come in it with me?"

"Anything's better than racing rafts with them," he said, rolling the ball towards the lake.

"Oh thanks, I feel so loved," I said, following him. He kicked it into deep water and we waded in. It actually was warm, I guess Charlie's heating system worked for a long time. I immediately crawled through the small hole, fitting easily. Then Derek attempted to fit his broad shoulders through.

"Okay," he said after 20 seconds of struggling. "I'm stuck."

"Well this is just hilarious," I said, crawling back over to him. I grabbed his arm and started pulling. When that didn't work, I started pouring water over him to try to get him to slip out. Eventually, that worked and he came flying out of the hole, landing right on top of me.

"Thanks," he said, smiling before rolling off me. "So this is what a hamster feels like. I feel bad for those things if they're claustrophobic. No wonder they always crap in your hand." I laughed before sitting up.

"Let's roll," I said. Then I realized how lame that sounded and Derek started laughing. I splashed water at him. "Shut up."

"Sorry," he said, whipping water out of his eyes. He fell against one of the sides, making the thing roll over completely, throwing me against a side.

"That is fun!" I said, throwing myself against the side, but nothing happened. Derek weighed too much.

"Oh, sorry," he said, moving away from his side and pushing on mine. Us and the ball went spinning, making me hit Derek several times. I wound up landing half on top of him. Then we heard splashing outside and Charlie popped his head through the hole. "What the hell are you guys doing in here? Can you go an hour without making out?"

"Shut up Charlie!" Derek and I yelled, both of us blushing. I rolled off him and glared at Charlie. Then he was pushed aside as Casey climbed in.

"I will supervise them," she said. "And for the future guys, never make out without a magically locked door between you and Charlie."

"We weren't making out," I said, still blushing.

"I know, just warning you." Then Charlie climbed in and hurled himself against the inflatable wall. We all fell and landed in a huge dog pile.

"Now everyone push really hard against a side," Charlie said. "I want to see if we can go so fast we go upside down!" As dangerous as that seemed, I really wanted to try that also and agreed.

Turns out that actually is possible, if you have the help of how super strong werewolves and a sorcerer who can make people stick to the wall without the help of spinning. After being stuck to a plastic wall for five minutes, I got out of the ball. Everyone else followed me, apparently also dizzy. We went over to Julie, Simon, Miles, and Tori, who were all lying around on the water trampoline.

"What's up my buddies?" James said, pulling himself over the side of the trampoline.

"Trying to get a tan," Tori replied, lying flat on her stomach.

"Same," Julie said, tipping her head back to look at us.

"Discussing whether DC is better than Marvel," Miles said, glancing at Simon.

"And the answer is DC," Simon said.

"No fucking way Simon!" Casey yelled. "Marvel is awesome and has Hugh Jackman! And what does DC have? Men in creepy tights with dorky capes."

"I agree with Casey," I said. "Marvel has so many more good movies than DC does."

"Yeah!" James said, falling onto the trampoline. "I even have a Wolverine jacket. Cost me a year of vacuuming every room in the house, but it's awesome and the best jacket I've ever had."

"I love that jacket," Casey said, looking at James. "Anyway, speaking of movies, anyone want to play lemonade or popsicle?"

"What are those?" Derek asked. "Or do I even want to know?"

"Lemonade is when you say the first letter of every word in a movie/show's title and people try to guess it and popsicle is you say a movie quote and people have to guess what movie and character said it."

"Okay we are so playing this!" I said. "I'm awesome with movies!"

"Okay, but we're not doing the running part, I'm too lazy," Julie said.

"Fine," James said. "Everyone get in a circle. Then we'll just lunge for the person and who ever touches them first gets to guess." We all moved back so we were against the yellow wall around the edge. "Casey, you suggested it so you can go first."

"Wait, what are we playing?" Charlie asked as Casey made her way to the middle.

"Lemonade," she said. "C M if Y C. And it's a movie."

"Rating?" Miles asked.

"Pg-13." We all thought for a couple seconds before I remembered her Leonardo DiCaprio obsession and thought of his movies and launched myself across the trampoline.

"Catch Me if You Can," I said when I touched Casey's hand.

"Yes!" she said, getting up and jumping to take a seat next to James.

"Uh… Okay…" I said, thinking. "It's a movie. E."

"Oh thanks for the easy one Chloe," Simon said. "What's it rated?"

"Uh, I only saw it on TV, but I would guess PG-13."

"Okay… Who's in it?" Julie asked.

"Orlando Bloom."

"Damn it! I should know this!" Julie yelled. "Um… What's the significance of the title?"

"It's the setting basically," I said. There was a two second pause until Charlie yelled "OOOOOHHHHHHHHH!" and ran towards me. He skidded the last foot or so and touched my foot as he said "Elizabethtown!"

"Yep," I said, moving back to my old spot.

"What movie is that?" James asked. "And how did you see it Charlie?"

"It's about this shoe maker who makes a crappy shoe and costs his company a billion dollars and then his dad dies and he has to go to Elizabethtown to get him," Charlie said. "And it was the only thing on at 1:30 in the morning." **(It really was the only thing on, and I was trying to type this. It actually is a good movie, but not my type.)**

"Alright then, moving on," Julie said.

"Yeah. TV show, The W D." **(The Walking Dead, which is awesome!)**

We played lemonade for another 30 minutes or so before moving onto popsicle.

"One of my favorite movie quotes ever," Casey said. By then we had been playing popsicle for another 30ish minutes. "That's a nice stick." James, Simon, and I all dived at the same time. Simon got to Casey just a millisecond before James and I.

"Wolverine, Wolverine," he said.

"Correcto!" Casey said, rolling back to her spot.

"Okay…" Simon said, thinking. "Okay, 'I'll. Never. Let. Go. I'll. Nev-" Casey's scream cut him off as she ran across the trampoline.

"Rose, Titanic!" she yelled. Then she looked at her watch and cried "Shit! That's on in 20 minutes! Damn it!" Then she jumped into the water and sprint swam to the dock, running back to the house.

"Well," Tori said, following Casey's progress. "I guess we're going inside."

"Might as well," Miles said. "It's already 6:45. And I'm hungry, who wants Pizza Hut?"

We all agreed on Pizza Hut and went back inside. Just as I was passing the second level, Casey came running down and into the TV room. I got dressed and towel dried my hair. By the time I sat on the couch, it was 7:10 and there was a baseball game on.

"I thought Titanic was on," I said, looking at Casey, who was fuming and looked like she was about to throw something.

"It was supposed to be," she said through clenched teeth. "But nooooo, the stupid baseball game on TNT had to run late. Firetruck baseball!"

"Language Casey, language," Charlie said, coming into the room, dressed in a simple white tee shirt and sweats. "Claire's home."

"I said firetruck didn't I?" Casey asked, looking back at Charlie. "Did you hear what I just said?"

"You mean the 'Firetruck baseball!' Yeah, I think everyone heard that," he said, sitting down at the corner spot.

"Pizza!" Miles shouted from somewhere downstairs.

"Oooh, greasy deliciousness!" Charlie said happily, jumping off the couch and going back downstairs.

"Can you bring me up some?" Casey asked me. "I am not leaving this couch until Titanic starts."

"Sure, tell me when it does," I said, making my way to the stairs. I got to the kitchen and unsurprisingly, Derek was sitting at the island with half a pizza in front of him.

"No I'm not being a pig," he said when I glared at his huge portion. "Miles specifically ordered a full large pizza for me and James."

"If you say so," I said, grabbing my own pizza and a Pepsi before sitting down next to him. "You watching Titanic?"

"I think Casey will kill anyone who doesn't," Tori said, coming up behind us. "And I want to see if The Big Bad Wolf cries at the end."

"I've never actually seen more than 10 minutes of it," Derek said. "And I don't cry. I'm going to guess that you didn't though."

"Of course I didn't!" Tori yelled. "Just because the hot guy died doesn't automatically trigger tears in people. What about you Chloe?"

"I didn't… cry, maybe tear up a little," I said, remembering the one time I saw Titanic all the way through.

"Okay well don't this time," she said. "If Derek tries to comfort you or anything I will hurl."

"Shut up Tori," I said. I just took a bite of my pizza when Casey screamed, "IT'S ON!"

"Come on Wolf-Boy," Tori said, getting up. "I need to see if you can actually have human emotions." Sighing, Derek got up and grabbed his pizza box.

"You know," he said, watching Tori as she left the room. "I might actually like her if she quit calling me Wolf-Boy." I then got the biggest smile ever on my face and Derek gave me a weird look. "Why are you smiling like a creeper?" Then I started cracking up.

"SIMON!" I yelled, still laughing. "I WIN THE BET!"

**So… likey, no likey? Please tell me my fanfic friends. I would really like some reviews. And the next person to respond to this author's note gets a shout out and a chapter about whatever they want! So respond to this guys! Just put "OM NOM NOM" into your review at some random point and state your chapter idea. The people who aren't first will probably still get their chapter, I'm running out of ideas. I want to know how many people actually read these things. Okay, so… there was a lot of things in this chapter, so I'll keep things to a minimum. Did anyone watch Titanic a few Fridays ago when there was a baseball game that cut in halfway through? That was so freaking terrible! I seriously started screaming and almost threw things at the TV! Smosh is completely awesome, I love them and so does everyone I know that has watched them. I'm officially voting Boxman for every election of any kind. Popsicle and lemonade are just the names my friends told us, I have no idea if anyone else calls them that, but I do. Harry Potter is coming out guys! And guess who gets to go to the midnight showing? Yes, me, and 8****th**** grade sister, my freshman friend, and her 7****th**** grade sister who is also my friend. We are being freaks and doing a skit to pass the time. Trust me, you don't want to know any more than that. I'm being forced to go to Paris during Thanksgiving break, which I know sounds bitchy and ungrateful but I HATE cities, except for Vegas and London, and don't want to go to France, no offense to anyone who lives there. Anyway, I won't be here for my free week, so I have no idea when I'll be able to update next. Until then my friends, goodbye!**


	5. Do you like kiwis?

**Jambo! Sorry it took me so long to update, I had a week in Paris, which sucked really bad, and now have Driver's ED three days out of the week right after school for two hours, so I have time to do nothing on those days and relax as much as I can on the other days. Last Sacrifice also came out, which I have been spending all me free time reading. I'm halfway done, although I'm going to quit reading it if Adrian or Christian dies, which will be terrible. In fact, the only reason I'm updating before I finish it is because I got a hilarious review from Green Eyes In The Rain (who might just have something you guys will love coming), which totally motivated me to finish this chapter early. The winner for the last Author's Note contest is Autumn O'Shea Swan, although I didn't really understand your chapter request, mostly because it seemed like you wanted a new story, which I'm not doing, not a chapter. So the prize goes to one of my favorite FanFictioners, BlugurlzJLJ. Yes, congrats, everything you asked for in your review is in here. Last thing before I leave you to the chapter, on Friday, I went to see Narnia with my friend, the one who Julie's based off of, and we were laughing our asses off the whole time, making stupid comments. Then, right after that, when I was calling my dad to come pick us up, she saw that there was a Tangled playing in 10 minutes, so we wound up going to that too, and my dad dropped off my sister, who's 13, to come see it with us. My friend wouldn't sneak into the theater, what a killjoy, so we had to buy a whole new set of tickets. Tangled was actually hilarious, and that's coming from a horror movie girl who hates musicals. Both of the movies had hot guys, the Eugene/Flynn guy, yes even as an animated person he is hot, and Caspian, who is so much sexier with that hot beard. Now, onto the chapter! (Also, this chapter is totally perverted in weird ways, even the chapter name.)**

"Simon!" I yelled from the couch, where I had been reading another book I got from Casey. It was around noon the day after Simon became my personal slave.

"Yes oh mighty one?" he said in an angry Zambian accent, coming around the corner. So far, I had told him he had to call me a different complementary name every time he talked to me and he had to speak in a Zambian accent, which he hand to look up. And yes, I also had made him bring me stuff just for the fun of annoying him.

"Go find Casey and ask her where the Harry Potter movies are. Then bring them to me please. And don't help him Julie."

"Why would I do that?" Julie asked, following Simon out of the room, video camera on him. She had vowed to document his whole time as a slave. They seemed to really like each other too, since Julie told Simon she would have to sleep in his room to fully capture what it was like to be a slave.

"You see it too?" James said, coming out of the video game room.

"Yeah, you going to be Simon's ultimate wingman?"

"Nope, I had no wingman to help me out with Casey, so Simon's not getting one for my sister," he said, sitting on the couch and flicking on the TV.

"How did you guys get together anyway?" I asked, watching as he flipped through the guide.

"She came here like 7 months ago and two weeks after that we were all forced to go camping and we wound up getting 'lost' for a day," he said simply, finally deciding on a rerun of The Walking Dead. Oh irony, how I love you.

"What do you mean by 'lost?'"

"She told me later that she purposely walked us around in random directions when we were collecting firewood so we would wind up alone for a _long _time." Then I started cracking up.

"Okay, how many movies has that been in?" I said, still laughing.

"Not many actually," he said. "She just did it for us to get to know each other better. That was when I started liking her though. We actually got together a month later."

"Okay, no offense, but Casey's weird."

"I know, that's why I love her," James said, smiling at some memory or something. "So how'd you and Derek come to be?"

"Uh… It's kind of a long story that I would prefer not to get into," I said, not wanting to talk about my and Simon's almost relationship.

"Aw come on!" he yelled. "I told you my love story, only fair you tell me yours."

"But involves things that I would really not like to talk about with anyone, and just forget." When James raised his eyebrows I quickly said, "No! Nothing like that, there was nothing like that, at all. It was just-"

"Here's your stupid movies," Simon said, tossing six boxes at me. When I glared at him he added, "Oh powerful ghost talker."

"You were saying?" James asked expectantly.

"Nothing!" I yelled at him, definitely not talking about the almost relationship now.

"Simon," he whined, turning to him. "Chloe won't tell me how she and Derek got together."

"Simon I order you not to tell him anything, although I don't think you would want to talk about it anyway," I said.

"Yes master, and I actually wouldn't care, I'm happy for you guys and am over it all," he said.

"Thanks Simon," I said, actually getting up and hugging him. "You get two hours off."

"Yes, freedom!" he yelled, running towards the video game room. "James, COD, now!"

"Alrighty then," James said, getting off the couch and following Simon. He turned back and said, "We are not done talking about this though."

"Yeah we are James," I called after him.

"Do the next two hours need to be documented?" Julie asked, looking at the camera.

"Just go in every half hour or so and show what they're doing," I suggested.

"That works," she said, sitting on the opposite end of the couch. Then she saw what I was reading. "Oh my god, you're reading Maximum Ride? That's the third book right?"

"Yeah," I said, looking down at the book. "I'm guessing you read them?"

"Hell yeah!"

"Okay, then when do Max and Fang start making out, and do they ever swear?"

"Don't even ask!" she yelled, grabbing a pillow and squeezing it hard. "Don't even mention it! Fang was so fricken stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid Fang! I refuse to read the next book!"

"What?" I screamed. "Now I want to know what happens!"

"No, no you don't," Casey said from behind the couch, making me jump. I looked back and saw she was only astral projecting. "In fact, you shouldn't even read Fang, it was the worst book ever, I actually started sobbing."

"Okay, all these things are just making me want to know what happened!"

"Seriously, don't read it," Casey said. "Anyway, Miles wants you to meet him out on the dock for some sort of training."

"Oh joy," I said sarcastically. I closed my book and got up off the couch. "Julie, if I'm not back in two hours, send Simon outside."

"Sure," she said, grabbing the remote. I went downstairs and walked out to the dock, where Miles was leaning on a table he had set up with a box on top of it. _Oh this is going to be great._

"Yay you're here," he said. "We got some interesting stuff to do."

"Hurray," I said. "What's in the box?"

"Dead people's things!" he said happily. He jumped up on the table and crossed his legs, pulling the box towards him. When he saw me looking at him suspiciously, he quickly added, "Don't worry, they're all buried a long way away, or cremated. Wait, what happens if you're around someone's ashes?"

"I don't know, and I would prefer not to find out," I said, glaring at him.

"I'm just saying, that would be so cool if like the person's soul went back into the ashes and then they moved into-"

"Shut up Miles," I said.

"Sorry," he said, reaching into the box. "Okay, so this was my dad's." He pulled out an old watch. "Summon with as little power as you can, then gradually work up."

"Sure." I took the watch and joined Miles on the table. I closed my eyes and focused on drawing the memory of Mile's dad from the watch. Every few second I would amp up the power and after a minute or two, there was an "Ahem," and I opened my eyes to see an Asian guy in a lab coat.

"Uh, hi," I said, not really sure what Miles wanted me to do after I summoned him.

"Hi… Is there something you need or were you just- Miles?" the guy said.

"Yeah, hi Dad," he said, looking kind of uncomfortable.

"I'm over last time if that's what you're worried about," the guy said. "7 years gives you a long time to forgive."

"Wait, you haven't talked to him in 7 years?" I asked, looking at Miles.

"Uh… Yeah, let's drop it though. Chloe, this is my dad, Pierre Chang, who worked on the Genesis Project. Dad, this is Chloe Saunders, one of the necro subjects."

"Ah yes, I remember you," Pierre said. "Did the experiment work?"

"Uh… Not exactly, I make zombies in my sleep."

"Oh, well that would be a problem then," he said. "My fault, sorry. I was one of the two people that worked on you."

"Oh, well, that's… I don't know what it is actually."

"Don't worry, I completely understand," Pierre said. "I would be kind of weirded out if I met someone who modified my genes. Anyway Miles, I like the earring." **(For anyone who watched LOST, I liked the Miles in that one flashback and thought the piercings made him hot, so he's got one on his ear.)**

"Uh… Thanks," Miles said, still looking a little uncomfortable. "I kind of went through an emo stage a while ago and kept it."

"Do you have pictures from then?" I asked, trying not to laugh.

"Maybe," he said, glancing at me quickly before turning back to his dad. "Well… We got to go, I'm trying to get Chloe to control her powers. Bye Dad."

"Bye son, summon me whenever," Pierre said before fading away.

"So…" I said, not really wanting to bring up any bad memories.

"Just drop it," he said, dropping the watch back into the box and taking out an old version of Shakespeare's work.

"Ew, whose was this?" I asked, taking the book and holding it at a safe distance.

"Frank's dad's, now just do the same thing."

"Sure, and what exactly do you want me to do when they pop up?"

"Uh… say hi and tell them you know Frank," he said. "Maybe they'll start up a conversation."

"Joy, we aren't doing this for everyone are we?" I asked, looking in the box and seeing it half full. "I need to be back inside by 2."

"Fine miss impatient," he said. "Now summon up an old guy."

And for the next two hours, I got to talk to 20 old people. The only interesting one was Charlie's grandma, who was crazier than Charlie, and not old-person crazy. She went into a bunch of stories about Charlie as a toddler, how he had a weight issue and didn't get potty trained until he was five.

"Uhg, I hate old people!" Miles yelled as he put all the stuff back into the box. "They're so boring! No one wants to hear the 'in my day' stories!"

"Agreed," I said, standing and watching him. "Can I go inside now, I need to resume Simon's life as a slave."

"Yeah, go," Miles said. "Tell Julie not to miss anything, I want a copy of this." I went back inside and ran into Derek and Tori, who were surprisingly not insulting each other while alone in the kitchen.

"When'd you get up?" I asked Derek, going over and kissing him, which earned a gagging noise from Tori.

"10 minutes ago," he said, taking a bite out of a sandwich he was holding.

"Why?" I asked, only slightly surprised.

"We were up until two Chloe." Casey had med us watch the encore of Titanic, which didn't end until the next day. For anyone who's wondering, Tori actually wound up crying and Derek and Casey were laughing their asses off at the end. **(Yes guys, Derek is a man, he does not cry at hilarious deaths.)**

"So, I was up at 11."

"So was I," Tori added. "And does anyone know why Simon is talking in a British accent?"

"It's Zambian!" I corrected her. "And because he's my personal slave and I told him to."

"Why is he your slave?" Tori asked.

"I won a bet."

"The one you somehow won last night?" Derek asked.

"Yeah, you want to know what it was on?"

"Yes Chloe," Tori said impatiently.

"That you guys secretly like each other and who would admit it first," I said in one breath, waiting for Tori to blow up. _Five-Four-Thr-_

"WHAT?" she yelled, looking at Derek at like he was crazy. _I didn't even get to 1. _"I didn't say anything!"

"Chloe that was sarcastic!" he said, looking at me.

"Uh huh," I said, looking between him and Tori. "Then prove you hate each other."

"Hate is kind of a strong word after all we've been through," Tori said hesitantly. "How about strongly dislike and find incredibly annoying?"

"I agree with her," Derek said. "Because I definitely still don't like her."

"Uh huh," I said again. _I'm just going to say that over and over and let this thing play out_.

"I don't! How could you like someone as bitchy and annoying as Tori?"

"Look who's talking, Mr. I'm too smart to talk to normal people."

"Well at least I don't have anger issues Tori," he said. That really pissed Tori off, which only proved his point, which I think made her more pissed and her hand started sparking.

"Tori," I said, looking from her to Derek, who was only smiling, with a worried expression.

"No let her do it," Charlie said as he came into the room. "I like fireworks."

"Thank you Charlie," I said, throwing my hands up in the air. "Okay, prove you don't like each other without blowing my boyfriend up please." Tori thought about that for a second before walking over to Derek and whispered something to him, while smiling evilly. Then Derek looked scared and started protesting.

"No! That's not what happened! Tori-"

"Don't care Wolf Boy," she said, still smiling. "Just remember that next time you're thinking up a smart ass remark." She then left the room.

"What'd she say?" I asked immediately, really worried that Derek was scared.

"I'm not allowed to say," he said. "She'll do it if I do, and I _really _don't want her to do it."

"How is she supposed to know if you tell us?" Charlie asked.

"I don't know, but I'm not taking any chances."

"Well I need to go find out!" he yelled, jumping off the counter and running in the direction Tori had gone. I turned to Derek.

"Is it seriously that bad?"

"Yes, yes it is," he said, sitting down at the table with his sandwich again. Sighing, I went into the pantry to make my own sandwich. As I was getting out a knife, I heard hysterical laughter from somewhere upstairs. Then there were pounding footsteps on the stairs and I could hear someone saying something over and over again. It was Casey, saying "Kiwis" over and over for some reason.

"Chloe do you like kiwis?" she asked as she came into the room.

"Uh, sure?" I said, still not used to her randomness. My answer somehow made her crack up though, and she was still laughing as she left the kitchen with two kiwis. **(Unless you watched TDWT, don't worry about it, it's just a perverted joke from the show.)**

"Wow that kid is weird," Derek said, going back to his sandwich.

"Yeah, but now I really want some kiwis," I said, putting down my half made sandwich and going to the fridge. **(Do you even keep kiwis in the fridge? I have no idea. Sorry if you don't.)**

"Yeah me too," Derek said, getting up and following me to the fridge. I opened the door and started looking through drawers and trying to find the kiwis. After a minute, Derek sighed and reached over my head to the bag of kiwis on the top shelf. I turned to him.

"Thanks," I said, looking up at him and taking the bag. He smiled and gave a silent laugh before going back to looking at the fridge.

"Now I want some more fruit," he said, pushing around some jars to see behind them.

"Never took you for a fruit person," I said as I walked back to my sandwich.

"Blame Simon. Couldn't have any good food so I had to stick with fruit." He picked up some peaches and sat back down. I sat down next to him and we talked for a while, finishing our lunches. Then Simon and Julie came in.

"Yeah, I mean I really don't- Damn you're in here," Simon said as he saw me. "Guess my break's over."

"Yeah it is, go sit in the pantry and organize it for 20 minutes. And I didn't hear any Zambian accent!"

"I forgot," he said, now talking in his accent. "To the pantry!" He went to the pantry while Julie sat down with Derek and I at the table.

"So how are you guys?" she asked, putting down her camera.

"Uh fine I guess," I said. Derek gave his usual response, a grunt.

"That's good, I'm actually really seeing Simon be a slave. It's really entertaining. Especially the whole accent part."

"I know, it's hilarious! That's why I did it," I replied. Julie suggested a couple ways for me to torture Simon before Frank then came in.

"Hey kiddies," he said, ruffling Julie's hair. He looked at Derek and his mouth dropped. "Are you eating kiwis _and _peaches?"

"Uh, yeah…" he said, sounding as confused as I was. Really what was with these people's obsession with fruit?

"Uh, that's um… HILARIOUS!" Frank yelled before cracking up.

"Why does everyone keep laughing at that?" I asked, kind of getting annoyed now.

"Sorry," he said once he could control his laughter. "I've been watching too many of their movies." Then he started laughing again. I turned to Julie.

"Do you get any of this?"

"Kind of…" she said. "Although I'm not a perv, so I don't find it funny."

"Oh great…" After a few seconds, Casey came running into the room, with Tori a few steps behind her.

"Chloe!" she yelled as she stopped a foot in front of me. "Tori said you direct stuff."

"Yeah… Why?"

"You want to direct a music video?"

"For what song?"

"I was thinking _This Afternoon _by Nickelback." **(I love Nickelback people, and that song is one of their best and one of my overall favorites, although it's about staying up all night drinking, but still an awesome song, so if you hate it, too fricken bad!)**

"Never heard it," I said. I wasn't really a rock music kind of person, so I only knew like two Nickelback songs.

"I have," Derek said, completely surprising me. Somehow I never pictured Derek sitting around listening to music either. "It's alright. I had the real music video before."

"I'm guessing that might have something to do with the 20 bikini wearing girls walking around a pool," Tori said, smiling at Derek. He glared at her.

"Actually no Tori, I found it really hilarious, just like how you took the time to count them all," he said coldly. **(Remember, he's still trying to prove he doesn't like her, so he's being mean.) **Her mouth dropped and then she smiled. Something clicked in his mind and he looked afraid, standing up and backing away from Tori. "Come on! I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it!"

"As much fun as it is to hear you beg Wolf Boy," Tori said, still smiling. "I follow through with my promises. Frank do you have a blow horn?"

"Yeah," he said uncertainly, looking at Julie. She closed her eyes and after three seconds, a blow horn appeared on Frank's lap. "Why?"

"You'll see," Tori said, grabbing it and holding it up to her mouth. "Hello everyone, Derek was being an ass so I'm getting some payback. Last night, or this morning actually, during Titanic, Derek actually was crying at the end. Yes, the Big Bad Wolf was crying and actually has feelings. Now everyone come down and make fun of him please. Tori out." **(Are the people who think Derek is a whimp happy? I honestly don't think he'd ever cry, but I needed something for Tori to threaten Derek with, I had something else but it was perverted and would ruin any still innocent minds that are out there.) **There was total silence for a few seconds, before Derek started growling and moving towards Tori, and Frank and her started laughing.

"What?" Simon yelled from the pantry. I had completely forgotten about him, whoops…

"Simon you can come out now," I said. He immediately burst out of the room and ran to the table.

"Seriously?" he practically screamed, staring at Derek with a way too amused expression. Derek just glared at him, which was of course the best answer he could have given. Simon immediately collapsed into a chair and started laughing hysterically. At this point, even I was smiling, but I quickly wiped it off my face when he turned towards me.

"For what it's worth," I said. "I think it's hot." It really was too, everyone loves a sensitive man. He stopped and looked at me, no longer growling, before glancing at Tori, who was still laughing with Frank and Simon.

"I'm going to kill her now," he said, walking towards her. I caught his arm.

"Now as fun as that sounds," I said, pulling him back towards me. "That would not be good."

"Fine, then I'll maim, or seriously injure," he said, pulling against my grip and starting to growl again. **(Anyone **_**not **_**know where that's from? Poor Dobby.)** Okay, now this was just getting funny.

"No you don't," I said, pulling harder on his arm, doing nothing of course. "Come on, let's go upstairs and get you calmed down." He continued glaring at Tori, barely taking notice of what I had said. I took on a gentler tone. "Derek." Finally, he looked down at me. "Please, you'll regret this later." He sighed, looking at Tori once again, before finally agreeing to leave.

I led him upstairs, quickly moving past the second floor, where laughter was radiating into the staircase. We went into his room and I pushed him onto the bed. "Sit." I sat down next to him. "We're not leaving this room until you don't feel like killing anyone." We just sat in silence for a few minutes until he looked over at me.

"For the record, I wasn't upset because Leonardo DiCaprio died," he said. "That was actually hilarious, but I just realized something during the second end."

"And that was?" I asked, glad he wasn't talking about ways to kill Tori.

"How terrible it would be if that happened to you," he said, smiling a little. "Not freezing to death after the Titanic sunk of course, but just dying in general." He looked down at feet then. _Awww! _I never expected Derek to be so sweet. I moved closer and hugged him tightly. He hugged me back. His words got me thinking about how my life would be if _he _died. I really couldn't imagine it. Just that it would be terrible and well, unimaginable.

"I can't even imagine what it'd be like if I lost you," I told him, hugging him even tighter. He pulled back a little, just enough so he could brush my hair behind my ear and kiss me. He pulled away again, resting his head against my forehead.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said, bringing me closer to him. We stayed like that for a few more minutes. Then he pulled back yet again, brought a hand up to rest on my cheek. He looked hesitant for a few seconds, then looked me in the eyes and said, "I love you Chloe." **(Cue the aw's.)**

I was stunned, to say the least. I mean really, this was Derek, the guy who almost never revealed his feeling or emotions, to anyone. It was totally unexpected, and yet… maybe it wasn't. Maybe I loved him too. Sure, I had only known him for a month, but sometimes that's all that was needed. I thought it over for a few seconds, then, seeing Derek begin to look panicked, I said it. "I love you too."

He got a huge smile on his face and pulled me back into another hug. "You scared me for a few seconds," he murmured against my neck. "I thought I had just humiliated myself more than Titanic."

"No, you just caught me by surprise." I turned my head just enough to kiss him. "You're good at that."

"Well you're much more predictable," he said, smiling. "No offense." Wanting to prove him wrong, I jumped on him, pushing him onto his back with me on top of him. He just stared at me before saying, "Okay, I take that back."

"That was the point." I kissed him again, not pulling away this time. After a minute, I reached for the bottom of Derek's shirt, pulling it up as much as I could with me lying on top of him. He flipped us over, breaking away just long enough to pull his shirt off the rest of the way. He was just grabbing the edge of my shirt when Charlie came bursting in. We immediately sat up as fast as we could. _Casey was so right._

"So are now crying about Dumbledore's d- Whoa!" he yelled, seeing us still on the messed up bed.

"Charlie!" we both yelled. He just smiled.

"Hey I'm not the one who left the door unlocked, to me there is no such thing as personal space," he said, wiggling his eyebrows. "Although I do hope I didn't interrupt anything, it'd be such a shame to deny Derek the chance to unleash some of his dog instincts."

"SHUT UP CHARLIE!" we both yelled again. He only laughed and skipped out of the room.

"Okay, can I kill _him_?" Derek asked, glaring at the door, which had closed as Charlie passed through it.

"I'll help," I said, picking his shirt up off the ground and throwing it at him. "Casey told me she had a fake Freddy Krueger claw thing in her room, I say we get those and make it fun."

"Why does she have Freddy claws? Halloween?" he asked, pulling his shirt over his head.

"She said she got them at the after Halloween clearance sales, so she can wear them and act out scenes."

"That kid is so not normal," he said, walking over and grabbing my hand. "Now let's go kill the annoying British boy."

**Okay, sorry if it sucked, but I had to cut it short so it wasn't too long and was rushing the last third or so so I could finish it tonight. On the bright side, I finally accomplished that 5,000 work or less rule I made at the beginning. Wasn't that just adorable? Who doesn't love proclamations of love? Again, normally I would never make Derek cry at anything, but I needed something for Tori to blackmail with and something really sweet as well, that also made you wimpy Derek fans happy, so there you go. I was so perverted in this chapter it's not even funny, actually it is funny, I was cracking up half the time I was writing this! Sorry if I messed up anyone's mind, mine is already too messed up to possibly try to be normal. The Zambian accent is from Blood Diamond, in case anyone thought I was being too random. Let's see, I seriously recommend no one ever reads Fang, unless they want their heart ripped to pieces by fictional characters. Who liked the Derek and Tori fights? I had a lot of modified quotes in this chapter, so let's do another Author's Note contest! Whoever finds a quote first that sounds like it's from somewhere else, put it in a review and tell me where it's from and who said it, you'll get a shout out and… I don't know, something you ask for in that review. That means there'll be several winners, so hurry up little FanFicters! Yeah… so that's all I can remember from this chapter, it took me way too long to write. So, I will attempt to update as soon as possible, and please review people! It makes my day and motivates me to write. I'm now going to stay up until 6 reading Last Sacrifice. Review please!**


	6. Imaginary Peanut Butter

**Okay, let me just start out with there is a perfectly good reason I haven't updated in what? Three months? And second I will say that there aren't words to explain how sorry I am about the exceedingly long period of inactivity on my part. So at first, I had the worst writer block ever and couldn't get over it, and I also had begun watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is amazing (on season 5 right now and if anyone spoils it for me I will take four months to update next time) and almost is replacing Lost for me, but it will never truly reach that level, so I had no real time to think about how to continue. Then as soon as I got some ideas, we found out my grandma has a terminal cancer so for the past few weeks either her and my grandpa, just grandpa, or my mom's friends have been staying in the room opposite the only computer I can type at, and they wouldn't appreciate me clicking away until 3 in the morning every night. This week's the first no one's been here since I really got over the writer's block, and tonight was the first major typing I could do, which I'm missing Shutter Island to do just so you guys know. Anyway, I'm sorry again and will honestly try the best I can to update as soon as possible, but I have no idea what will happen. Here's the really crappy chapter and as always sorry for grammar/spelling and don't own anything Darkest Powers or any of the million movies I mentioned here.**

"Get up Hobbitses, get up!" a really creepy sounding voice yelled in my ear. I immediately jumped out of bed looking around frantically, to see Casey brushing off her shirt.

"Sorry, I was just watching Lord of the Rings," she said, looking down at me from where she floated in astral projection form. "And why'd you have to jump through me? That is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever experienced."

"Sorry," I said, sitting back down on my bed. "But when I heard this creepy Sméagol voice right next to my head I got I little freaked out."

"Okay, I guess that makes sense, but you have to get up! We need to do some random music videos today, since we weren't home yesterday. So get your little ass downstairs soon, or I'll have Charlie make your bed levitate 5 feet off the ground. Actually that'd be fun, but probably only for me. Anyway, wake up Derek and Simon when you come down, they're still sleeping too." And with that, she disappeared, although not with a fun sound effect, which would have been so much cooler. I groaned, rolling over and standing up, knowing she really would just come in with Charlie.

As I grabbed some clothes, I saw it was 12:16, which might have been unusually late, but well had all been up past 1:00 this morning. Casey had finally convinced Miles and the rest of the adults to take us to Cedar Point, where we spent the whole day. It actually was fun, although I'm not nearly as big as a roller coaster freak as Casey or anyone else, but I still like them. Simon, Casey, James, and Charlie spent the whole day yelling random things and acting like idiots, which was actually funny, especially when I suddenly heard the Pokémon Theme Song being belted out from the front on Millennium Force.

I quickly took a shower, got dressed, then went across the hall to Derek's room. I turned the knob quickly and walked in, not worried about waking him since I was doing that anyway… only to find him walking out of the bathroom soaking wet with a towel around his waist.

"Uh… Hi Chloe," he said, looking kind of surprised and a little embarrassed, but probably nothing compared to how much I was.

"Oh. S-s-sorry," I managed to stutter out. "C-Casey t-t-told me to w-w-wake up you and S-Simon a-a-and- I'll just leave." I turned around to head out, but Derek's hand on my arm stopped me.

"I didn't say you had to go," he said, sounding just amused now. "I'll be dressed in a minute. You'll need me to wake up Simon anyway." That much was true, in our week living in motels, I discovered that Simon is the heaviest sleeper I've ever met. And when he was woken up before he was ready, we had to literally drag him out of bed.

"Alright," I said, moving to the side of the door to lean against the wall, still completely embarrassed. Derek just gave me another amused look before pushing the door closed with his foot and turning around and moving towards his still unpacked shopping bags. "And why do you think this is so funny?"

"Well really Chloe," he said, taking the tag off of a pair of boxers with his back to me. "We are dating and with the Changes it's not like you've haven't seen worse."

"Yeah well, I was a bit distracted at those times, what with all the werewolves and people trying to- Oh Derek, I'm sorry." Derek had dropped the clothes he had collected so far, and was now just standing there looking at the floor. I pushed off the wall and walked over, putting my hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to remind you of him."

The him was Liam, who Derek had actually been doing a great job of forgetting, for it happening just over a week ago. Sure, what he did was always in his mind, and it was the same for me with what happened to Tori's mom and Davidoff, but he was affected so much more. Even after my initial "you're not a monster" speech, he still sort of felt like he was, that he could have done something other than killing him. And it seems like we were heading for yet another speech now.

"It's fine Chloe," he said, shrugging off my hand and bending back over to grab his clothes. "Just forget about it."

"Not until you do," I told him, moving around so I could face him. "And you need to Derek." He just avoided my glance, moving to a different bag for sweat pants. I hurried after him and stood in front of him, putting my hands on his chest to stop him. "Derek, come on look at me." He reluctantly did, and I could see the regret and pain in his eyes. "There was nothing else you could have done, absolutely nothing. He would have killed both of us without a second thought, and what you did you did to protect us. And doing what's right doesn't make you a terrible person, even if you think that, you aren't. So you need to forget it, because there was _nothing_ that would have stopped him."

He just stared at me for a couple seconds, then looked at the wall behind me. "Maybe that's true, Chloe, but I could have figured out something, anything, that didn't end up killing him. And the fact that I didn't and that I didn't mean to kill him in the first place does make me a terrible person, at the least."

"Maybe you didn't knowingly," I said, not really knowing why I was saying that. "Your…. Werewolf instincts lead you to do the best possible thing for the people you love, even if you think it's not right, it _is_. And they were completely right that time, and that time in Albany. I know you regret what you did, but it was what had to be done, and you can't say that's not true." I took his lack of answer as a sign that he agreed. "So why can't you just forgive and stop beating yourself up about it every time it comes up? I know you can't forget what happened, but you need to at least accept that what you did was right. Please?" He looked back at me for several seconds before sighing.

"I'll try," was all he said, but from Derek that was like half acceptance answer. I smiled and wrapped my arms around his neck. He put his arms around me and rested his cheek on the top of my head. "Thanks Chloe."

Suddenly, he pulled away quickly, without warning. He returned my confused look with a small smile. "Towel was falling off." Deciding it was best to just drop the whole Liam thing, I backed up until I hit the bed and sat down.

"You don't have any idea what Casey has planned for today do you?" I asked, averting my eyes as he pulled on boxers.

"Probably some new kind of torture that will make me wish I was never born."

"Music videos, with an 's,' as in multiple music videos. So yeah, you're completely right, as usual." He laughed as he dropped the towel and put on a pair of sweats.

"Well from what I've heard, Casey has good taste in music. Unless she just happens to play one playlist any time a hear it."

"Actually," Casey said, jumping down from the desk she had been floating on. "I have all my regular music on one playlist, and only one other that's all A Very Potter Musical. Only have 93 real songs on my iPod though!"

"Whatever happened to knocking?" Derek asked, looking for a shirt.

"It's kind of hard when you're a ghostly apparition," she said. "I could just scream 'Om nom nom' really loudly instead though, but some people find that annoying."

"Can't imagine why," I muttered sarcastically.

"I'm the only one allowed to be sarcastic missy!" Casey said, randomly pointing a finger at me. "Anyway, I just came over to make sure the big and not so bad wolf was up, now hurry up and get the wimpy sorcerer. The bacon's getting cold and doughnuts sticky."

"What?" Derek said enthusiastically. I laughed, always the one to listen when food comes up.

"Yup, the breakfast of unhealthy champions. Nice abs by the way." She did that annoying double barrel thing along with a creepy wink then disappeared laughing hysterically.

"Have I mentioned that she's the weirdest person I've ever met?" Derek asked, pulling on a random blue t-shirt.

"I think that goes without saying." I jumped off the bed and over to him. I kissed him, then asked, "Ready to attempt to wake the beast?"

"I have a feeling bacon and doughnuts won't make it too hard," he said, taking my hand as we left his room. It wasn't in fact hard at all, Derek just shook the bed while both of us yelled bacon over and over again, making Simon bolt wide awake. We left him and followed the smell of bacon into the kitchen.

We had been sitting and eating for a couple minutes when I heard Charlie's usual skipping entering the kitchen behind me. Suddenly, he stopped skipping and screamed, running behind the island. I turned around to look at him, now looking slightly over the counter holding a pink rubber scraper.

"Oh, it's just you," he said, standing back up and moving towards the food. "You know this Freddy thing is getting really old at this point." I just gave him a confused look, but the Derek started laughing, pointing at my shirt, which was a long sleeved black and red striped shirt, and I started laughing too.

Two days ago, we had found Casey's Freddy claws but were caught when we snuck out of her room by James, who just wanted to join us in our torture of him, even though he didn't know the reason. He gave Derek a Freddyish sweater, some rope, and a hat, which apparently James had modified for a purpose just like this. It had a perfectly disguised see through patch that hid a camera that was mounted inside. James had apparently gotten it a while ago and had been waiting for an opportunity to use it.

So Derek went into Charlie's room in his Freddy outfit and when we showed everyone the video later, we found out that Charlie had freaked out, yelling "Don't kill me!" over and over. Then Derek tackled him and tied him up and hung him upside down by the fan, which was surprisingly strong. He left the hat in there and it took Charlie three hours of swinging around and swearing profusely to finally untangle himself from the rope. He actually didn't know who did it to him, so he just went around screaming for someone to tell him who had tied him up. He actually had a little sorcerer tantrum and blew up all the pots with the dinner Claire was cooking in the kitchen, which pissed her off and he literally got sent to his room without dinner.

"Well sorry," I said, pulling myself out of the flashback. "I just put on a random shirt, Freddy sweater was not intended."

"Sure…" he said, obviously not convinced, as he hopped onto the counter with a banana.

"Why do you always go on the counter?" I asked. He sighed.

"I have very strong emotional ties to this counter," he said, lying down on it now. "I had a bad breakup with another one another counter and this one comforts me."

"You mean the Bio counter?" Julie asked as she came in with Claire.

"Yes, with the goose, I loved that goose," he said, dropping his head onto the granite and doing something that I hoped was him trying to hug the counter. **(This goose and counter thing does have a story behind it, a very strange story, but it's hilarious)**

"Okay then…" Derek said, obviously as disturbed as I was.

"Hey Chloe I have a question," Casey said, popping up in the middle of the table. "Who calls a cast and crew meeting?"

"Uh, usually it would be the director, why?"

"Uhg, well you're calling a meeting in the basement, I'll go tell everyone." And with that, she yet again disappeared.

"Okay, come on Chloe, got to follow your own directions," Charlie said, getting a handful of bacon then leaving. I sighed and got to up get another doughnut then motioned for Derek to follow me to the basement, which he did. I was surprised to see Aunt Lauren sitting on a couch when we reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Does anyone want to tell me why I've been kidnapped?" she asked as Derek and I walked around and sat on a couch opposite her.

"God, she's planning on torturing everyone," Derek said, motioning Kit, who had just come down the stairs, over to us.

"Alright, what's going on? I was just sitting on the couch happily watching American Chopper when Casey ran in, unplugged the TV, and told me to come down here."

"You watch that show?" Aunt Lauren asked. "That explains so much."

"Yeah Dad," Simon said, hopping over the back of the couch with two doughnuts, ignoring his dad's disapproving look. "That show is pretty crappy."

"It is not!" Kit yelled, very offended. For the next five minutes, we argued about whether American Chopper was a good show, although it was just Kit against the rest of us, and we completely won.

"People! Shut up!" Casey yelled as she came running down the stairs with Claire in tow. Everyone in the house was not in the basement. "Alright, so I was thinking and I realized how incredibly stupid making music videos was, so that's no longer happening."

"Cool, I'm leaving," Charlie said, already getting off his chair.

"No, you're staying, you'll like this anyway. So after eliminating music videos, I started thinking about other things to record. First I thought up just reenacting awesome movie scenes, but that sounded boring and cheesy and too scripted. So here's the best idea, parody! You know, like Epic Movie and the Scary Movies. We are each a character of our own choosing, then we go through all these scenes modeled after awesome ones. Get it?"

"I call Howie from Benchwarmers!" Charlie screamed, jumping up and down.

"Okay, everyone, minus the adults, minus Miles, because you guys are the cameramen, write down who you want to be. Then Chloe, you're with me and we'll figure stuff out. Then people who have people go look up their best scenes on YouTube to have a better knowledge of them."

As crazy as Casey was, this actually sounded real fun, and apparently everyone, besides Derek that is, thought it did too. Casey wasn't going to participate in the actual "movie" because she can't act **(I really can't guys, even with all the stupid skits my sisters and friends do)**, so we had six willing actors and one stubborn werewolf who was trying to allow Casey and I to make him the stage crew, and we reluctantly agreed.

Miles became Tallahassee from Zombieland, with a surprisingly good southern accent. Tori was forced to be a "cool person" by Casey and got Anna from Van Helsing, who is pretty cool. Julie was Hermione, because we needed a responsible person. James was Danny Archer from Blood Diamond and Simon finished it off with Steve the Pirate from Dodgeball. Charlie, as mentioned before, was Howie. **(Alright guys, if you don't know who some of these people are, you might be confused so I suggest typing them in on YouTube and looking up some of their best moments, specifically Howie, because he's simply hilarious.)**

I just couldn't take it anymore. "Casey! Shut up!" I yelled, interrupting another of her countless rants that had been going on for two hours now. "The whole point is of this is that it's unscripted! They don't have to say or do whatever you want! You're not even the director!"

"Whoa, alright then Little Miss Overreactor," Casey said, dropping onto the grass. "I'm so sorry I got on your nerves, I won't do it again." I let out an exasperated sigh, looking around at everyone else, who were scattered across the grass and dock near the storage shed, all wearing the same annoyed and pissed expression. At least I wasn't the only one getting mad after eight 10 minute "do it my way" rants.

Besides Casey telling everyone how to do stuff, things had actually been going quite well. Casey and I had figured out a basic plot line within ten minutes. To say it simply, it was basically Blades of Glory except with rollerblading. Hermione (Julie) and Steve (Simon) were the arch rivals of brothers Danny (James) and Tallahassee (Miles) in the intense world of competitive pairs-rollerblading. They challenge each other to a skate-off, which will be hosted on live television by Howie (Charlie), who roots for Danny and Tallahassee, and Anna (Tori), who supports the other pair. From there everyone is either practicing, planning, sabotaging, or trying to win other's support. Sure, it was a stupid idea, but so were most comedies, and with it mostly being unscripted, it was turning out great.

"Hey, can we get back to filming now?" Charlie asked, flipping his now white bowl hair cut with his plastic sword. The good thing about having sorcerers around was that changing appearances was extremely easy. "Maybe without you talking all the time we could get this scene done."

"Yeah, let's get back to work," I said, standing up and brushing off my legs. At this point, we were about two thirds of the way done with filming, and Howie was currently attempting to sabotage Hermione and Steve's practice rink by spraying sunscreen everywhere, except he got trapped by the moonlight, and couldn't leave.

"This time though you sho-" Casey began but cut herself off when everyone stared at her angrily. She then pretended to zip her mouth shut.

And surprisingly, without Casey butting in after every two minutes, the scene went perfectly. Charlie screamed like a girl, swatting at the "beams of moonlight," which were really just flashlights, with his sword. Finally, we ended the scene with him crawling into the giant hamster ball crawled up in the fetal position, rocking back and forth.

"You know what," Charlie said, rolling out of the ball. "We need a musical number in this film."

"Hey, I said music videos were stupid," Casey said.

"Are you saying the end of Jackass is stupid?" Miles asked. "Because the songs at the end are the best part."

"No, the best part is actually the last stunt of the second one where they make the one guy's fake beard out of ever-"

"Case!" James yelled, jerking his head towards Claire and my aunt.

"Oh, well you guys all know what I mean anyway."

"No," Julie, Claire, Aunt Lauren, Tori, I, and surprisingly Charlie said.

"Yeah but you're all too- Wait, did I hear a British twang in there?" James asked, staring at Charlie, astonished.

"It's not called a twang, but yeah, never seen them," Charlie said. James looked seriously angry and randomly started brushing his hair behind his ear over and over again. Charlie sighed and snapped his fingers. "What?"

"Whoa, wait," Derek said, looking creeped out. "What was with the spazzy ear thing?"

"It's code for 'freeze the people who shouldn't hear what we're talking about,'" Casey said. "James just isn't very discrete. Who'd you freeze anyway?"

"Just to be safe, all the adults besides Miles," Charlie said.

"Hi!" Miles said, waving enthusiastically. "Oh, and we're now apparently having a Jackass marathon tonight, as soon as we're done with this thing. My little British friend, it really is unacceptable that you've never seen any of these classic films about people smart enough to be paid for being idiots."

"I don't like that tricky use of words Miles," Casey said. "Those guys are hilarious and some are quite attractive."

"Really?" Miles asked, sounding sarcastic. "And during what parts did you think that?" Casey jaw just dropped, while Miles, James, Simon, and Derek burst out laughing. The rest of us were just confused. Simon saw my expression and started laughing harder.

"They do a lot of the stunts naked Chloe," he said.

"That's kind of unnecessary," Charlie said. "Although I bet Tori wants to see it now!" Tori's face grew red with anger, and she looked like she was about to attack him.

"No worries Tor," Simon said, obviously enjoying this. "You'll get to see it all later." She started to open her mouth but Miles cut her off.

"Alright, stop right there. As much fun as it would be to watch, I don't want a cat fight. Let's just go back to filming and you can all yell at each other later."

"Yeah, Charlie, three two one, restart!" Casey said. Charlie immediately snapped his fingers and Casey continued with, "You know what, I don't even care. It's not right, and I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"Then how about we just do a Step Brothers thing like they did in the car?" Julie said. "An acapella."

"Julie you're a genius!" Casey yelled, running over and hugging her. "We need a song!"

"I vote for something hardcore, break the usual standards of songs sung in movies," Simon said.

"Afterlife! Please please please Afterlife!" Casey said, jumping up and down.

"God, it's not that good of a song Case," James said. She just glared at him. "No, I was wrong, it's a wonderful song that is worshiped by everyone on the planet."

"Don't be stupid James, tons of people hate Avenged Sevenfold." **(Don't judge me, I have very strange tastes in music and Afterlife is my favorite song)**

"No one likes that song besides you anyway Case," Julie said.

"I do! But drop it now, cause I got a better idea," James said.

"Here we go," Tori muttered sarcastically.

"Shut up, this is a good idea. So you know that a capella Star Wars John Williams tribute?"

"No…" I said.

"Well it's this thing on YouTube that this one guy made using only quotes from Star Wars and he sings them to the tune of some of John Williams' songs. Like the Indiana Jones one was: Kiss a wookie, kick the droid, fly the falcon through an asteroid! 'Till the princess is annoyed, this is spaceships, this is monsters, this is star wars we love it!" It actually did sound pretty cool, James sang it, with an amazing voice I must add, perfectly to the tune of the Indiana Jones theme. **(Go watch it guys, even if you hate Star Wars, it's hilarious and this whole thing will actually make sense)**

"But anyway, the idea is during where credits would be, we play a sort of Step Brothers themed scene where we take quotes from our parody and sing them to the tune of some awesome songs."

"James! You're a freakin' genius!" Casey yelled, plowing into him, with enough force to knock over a normal guy, and kissed him.

"Ah! My eyes! My eyes!" Charlie yelled, slapping his hands across his eyes and running behind Tori. "Tell me when it's safe."

"Shut up Chuckie," James said, pulling away from Casey. "Just because your last girlfriend broke up with you after you tried to get her to eat imaginary peanut butter doesn't mean everyone else has to censor everything."

"Imaginary peanut butter?" Tori asked, obviously holding in laughter as she looked over her shoulder at Charlie.

"Hey it worked for the one dude! But it turned out she was allergic to nuts and also found it creepy, but that's her problem." Tori started laughing hysterically.

"Anyway," Casey said. "It's a fu…iretruckin' great idea. Chloe, you agree?"

"So far yeah, but show me the video before it's a definite."

"Yes!" James said, doing a stupid happy jump while pumping his fist in the air.

"But let's work on that later, we have one scene and the skate-off left, then we'll put that together."

"Wait, wait, wait," Simon said, getting an evil smile on his face. "Derek has to be in the singing part."

"No," he said simply, giving Simon a death glare.

"Yes! Because then we could actually have a guy named Derek doing a Derek-like impression!" Casey exclaimed happily. "You're doing it!" **(Okay guys, if you haven't seen Step Brothers then just type in "Step Brothers Car scene" on YouTube and watch what pops up, it's epic and will make the next part make a lot more sense.)**

"No," he growled, thoroughly pissed now. "I don't sing and I'm not gay."

"Aw, Derek's not gay, he just sings high like thissssssss," Charlie said/sang highly.

"Come on Der," I said, looking up at him. "You don't actually have to sing, we can autotune it."

"I swear if you do that cheesy 'please for me' thing I'm gonna puke," Tori said.

"Wasn't planning on it actually, it _is _cheesy," I said, looking back at Derek. "But please? It would seriously make the movie." He just stared at me for a few seconds before sighing deeply.

"On one condition, I'm only saying whatever you write, not raising my voice or holding out syllables."

"Done!" I said, hugging him tightly. "I love you," I whispered in his ear. **(God that sounded cheesy)**

"You owe me big time," he said just as quietly. I pulled back enough to look at his face.

"Also done," I said, kissing him.

"Aw come on!" Tori and Charlie both exclaimed, groaning.

"Alright guys," Simon said, clapping his hands repeatedly. "Love fest's over, back to work." Derek pulled back smiling, and we got back to work.

"Case you're amazing!" I yelled as the edited version of our little musical number ended. I was never really good at the technical aspects of film making, meaning lights, sound, editing, and all that jazz, but it turned out that while she couldn't act to save her life, Casey was a technical genius. She had the whole "movie" edited within an hour, which I didn't even think was possible.

"Thanks," she said, trying to control her laughter. "I'm watching that again!"

For those who are wondering, we wound up doing sections from five songs. James and Miles did a little duet consisting of an argument they had had earlier about which Pokémon to name their moves after to the tune of Don't Stop Believin.' Julie and Simon redid part of the insult fight they had in preparation of gloating after a win to the Pirate of the Caribbean Theme song. Charlie repeated his speech about how the sun isn't a monster, but the moon is, to We Will Rock You, complete with slaps and claps. Tori did the rant about how she wanted her life to be like Buffy's from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not some freaky 1800's Transylvanian one, to the tune of the Buffy intro music. That brings us to Derek, who Charlie morphed into looking exactly like Spike from Buffy. He showed up after the winner for the skate off was announced, and Anna/Tori dragged him around for the rest of the film, including waiting at the bus stop where the whole musical part took place. He just started listing off what most of us agreed were the best lines, such as "Take off your stalker hood," "All troubles are less with SPF 200," and "Dobby sacrificed himself for you!" to the Indiana Jones theme because it was easiest.

She was on the third replay of Derek's part, which she did an awesome job autotuning so the abnormally high voice sounded completely natural, when Simon suddenly appeared next to me, making me jump about a foot into the air.

"Guys!" he whined. "I want to watch the moooovies. Charlie already has the block up on the second floor and why are you still laughing?" The last part was directed at Casey, who was spinning her chair around laughing her ass off.

"Just show him," I said, leaning against a counter. "But he's the only one until whenever we show the whole thing." Casey restarted the whole thing, and after three seconds they were both laughing hysterically, and still laughing three minutes after it ended.

"Simon!" I yelled, getting pissed as I uselessly tried to drag him back onto his feet from the ground, which he had rolled onto as soon as Derek's part came up. "I thought we had other movies to watch."

"You're right," Casey said, recovering surprisingly fast, only to have a five second laugh attack as soon as she stood up. "But I for one am not going to be able to stop laughing, so let's just say Chloe didn't know the difference between Aliens and Predators."

"Uh… Should I?" I asked, confused when they looked at me with amused but also astonished faces.

"Come on! Those are classics!" Simon shouted.

"Agreed, how dare you call yourself a movie person," Casey said, shaking her head violently, then started laughing again. "Well at least it's true, let us go watch people stick leeches to their eyes now!" And she skipped out of the room. I turned to Simon.

"Should I really know the difference?"

"I'm with Casey on this one," he said, following her out. "It's unacceptable that you haven't seen them."

"Well I'm sorry, I'm not much of a sci-fi horror person, despite that I'm basically living one now."

"No, there's no aliens."

"Yet," I corrected him. We both looked at each other, smiled, then realized that aliens might as well show up and still be normal for us, and got the same panicked look on our faces. The first thing I did when we reached the second floor was ask "No one's seen any aliens, ever, have they?"

"Seen no, seen evidence that they exist yes," Casey said, shivering as she sat on the couch. "Hence my fear of owls."

"It's a very long, detailed, and senseless story," Julie said seeing my confused look.

"Yeah that I don't want to-" Casey began but then broke off into another laughing fit, which Simon joined in on.

"Why does everyone keep doing that here?" Tori asked, sounding very annoyed.

"Chl-Chloe di-didn't know the difference b-b-between P-predators and A-a-aliens," Simon said between laughs, which soon everyone besides Julie and I caught on to.

"Come on! It's not like I've seen every movie out there!" I said defensively, plopping down angrily next to Derek, who was laughing as hard as the others. I gave him my best glare and he immediately stopped.

"Hey," Miles said, recovering first. "We have things to do, like show the Brit here what-"

"Miles, I _really _don't want you to finish that sentence," Casey said, looking terrified.

"Yeah, you probably didn't," he said pensively. "Anyway, on with the show!"

Honestly, I enjoyed Jackass way more than I should have. It really was hilarious, especially the last stunt, which I have to agree with Casey was better than the sing along. And strangely enough, I seemed to enjoy it more than Charlie, who seems like he's one of the guys in the making. We even watched the other two, buying the third from Pay Per View, and didn't finish them until 11. By then, I was too exhausted to do anything else, so I went to my room.

As soon as I stepped inside though, I saw it. On my pillow was a sheet of paper with black writing on it. Slightly freaked, I rushed over to my bed. It read:

_Chloe, meet me at the dock at 5:30 am, we all need to talk -Kit _

_PS: Don't get freaked out, Derek, Simon, Tori, and Lauren will be there too._

Well, despite Kit's reassurance, I was freaked. Why did he need to talk to us at practically dawn, alone, outside the house, for? I didn't even bother contemplating not going, if Derek was also supposed to be there he wouldn't let me skip. Whatever it was about, it would have to wait… only about six hours.

**Shitty, I know, and I'm really sorry guys. This was the best I could do with everything that's been going on. The next chapter will be a plot chapter, tons of plot stuff to come, so this story really isn't turning into the last one. I just saw Step Brothers a few weeks ago, and the car scene from it and also Justin Bieber getting shot on CSI are the two videos I've watched most on YouTube, ever. I've been watching **_**way **_**too many movies and YouTube lately, so that's why so many are mentioned in this chapter, and Jackass was on when I started talking about it, so that's why it came up, plus it's an awesome movie. Oh, and anyone looking for a good movie to watch that's in theaters, talk to me, I've seen almost all of them, just came home from Beastly (which I hate to admit was amazingly hilarious and I have a new respect for blind people, Will is one of my all time favorite movie characters now) and Red Riding Hood actually. Please review, it'll make me feel better (not that I'm all depressed or anything really, maybe I'll just get sympathy reviews if I imply that I am). **


	7. No, I don't want your deformed pastry

**Oh my God guys! I actually have a whole plot thought up! I know, shocking isn't it! I definitely am shocked, and excited! And I published this in just over a month, which is impressive for me, so don't ruin it! So, just a couple things before we get to what I think is a good chapter. Number one, last Saturday I officially finished Buffy, and I cried at the end. I will truly miss that show, and sadly my mom won't let me get the complete series on DVD, so I'm stuck with Netflix. Number two, found the best website ever, called . It is fricken awesome and hilarious, and has changed my life, so that's why my chapters might get a little more out there than they used to be... Go look it up, please? You'll love it, I think. Number three, read City of Fallen Angels in three days, finishing around ten last Thursday. It was awesome, although not the best in the series. Stupid cliffhanger though! And just when things had worked out. Liked it anyway, you have to if it has Jace in it. Number four, finished the Gathering this morning, or actually yesterday morning. It was amazing as well! No, nowhere near Darkest Powers status, but that's probably because of my love for Derek, and there are no werewolves, at least I think… I'm really excited to see where this trilogy is going, and it looks like there might be a little run in with our favorite group of genetically altered supernaturals. Definitely go read it. Alright, that's it. Sorry for grammar/spelling errors, and out of characterness. Don't own DP as always.**

You'd think that after everything I've been through, the zombies, werewolf attacks, mad scientists, that I could take anything. Well, walking through the pitch black house with no one else up was an exception. I knew that nothing was going to pop out and kill me, but some little part of my brain kept going through all the possibilities. Every time I passed a door I thought I saw it movie, shadows behind couches and other stuff seemed to shift, and I almost screamed when I heard the ice maker in the fridge start up. It only took about five minutes, but they were some of the worst ones of my life. I was never so happy to outside at 5:30 am.

Being outside wasn't really that bad, the moon was full and lit the yard well, and there was lots of room to run. Still, I kept hoping anyone, even Tori, was already out. When I walked through the thin line of trees separating the main yard from the lake, I was discouraged to see no one there. As I got closer the dock however, I heard voices, but couldn't tell who they were or what they were saying. I moved faster, eventually recognizing Derek's rumble and either Simon's or Kit's voice, they sounded so much alike, as I got to the storage shed. Rounding the corner, I saw Derek looking frustrated as he faced Kit who… well was just Kit, always way too calm, like Chuck Norris.

Derek saw me almost immediately and nudged his dad's arm. Kit stopped mid-sentence and turned to smile at me.

"Hey," I said through a yawn, _so _not a morning person.

"See Dad," Derek said, closing the gap between us and hugging me. "I told you people will be too tired to care, we should have just gone on a fake trip to Wal-Mart or something."

"Casey and James are in love with Wal-Mart," I reminded him. "They wouldn't have let us go without them, Target would have worked though."

"Yeah, but then they would have known something was up," Kit said. "It's like Barnes and Noble, no one goes there willingly." **(Yeah, anyone who likes Target or Barnes and Noble you should take offense, there's something wrong with you. Wal-Mart and Borders rule the world!)**

"That's why I went with Wal-Mart," Derek said.

"I'm sorry about the earliness Chloe," Kit said. "We just can't risk the others hearing until we have everything set."

"Yeah, I'm still confused about what the everything is," I said.

"What we're doing with this," Derek said, pulling the list of phone numbers and names Simon had collected of the other Genesis subjects.

"Okay, that makes sense. Did you tell any of them about it?"

"Not yet," Kit said. "Like I said, we need to plan first."

"Plan what?" Tori said, sounding pissed as she appeared at the corner. "Because it better be more important than sleeping, I have not gotten enough of that and the stupid alarm stopped a very good dream."

"No one really cares Tori," Derek said.

"And no one asked for your opinion Wolf Boy," Tori said.

"Hey, haven't we had the arguing conversation before?" I asked. "Get over it." Surprisingly, they both closed their mouths and resorted to glaring. Kit clapped.

"Why are we clapping?" Aunt Lauren asked as she came around the corner and joined our little circle.

"Chloe got those tow to stop fighting," Kit said, motioning towards Derek and Tori.

"That _is _impressive, good job honey," She said. I rolled my eyes at the nickname.

"Alright, Simon better have his ass out here soon," Tori said. "I swear if he's still sleeping I'm going to blow up his bed."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down," Simon's voice called from somewhere between the house and shed, followed by running footsteps. "I'm comin.'"

"Can we move over to the dock?" I asked, shaking off a foot that was covered with dew and grass.

"That'd probably be a good idea," Kit said, migrating towards the nice, dry, non-grassy wood. Simon approached and immediately hopped up onto the railing of the dock, not knowing that every one of us saw the perfect opportunity to push him off into the water.

"Okay, down to business," Kit said, holding his hand out to Derek, who gave him the list. "You all know that we're here only temporarily, and it's time for us to decide when that will end."

"I really don't see why we have to leave," Tori said. "You said this place was safe, so why don't we just stay? These Cable guys won't be able to find us anyway."

"It's Cabal," Simon corrected. "But as much as I hate to say it, I see Tori's point. Really Dad, we stayed in Albany for almost a year with no problems, and that was with school. Plus everyone who ever had anything major to do with us is dead."

"Actually we never did find out what happened to Margret and Russell," I said. "Besides them being evil."

"Exactly," Kit said. "And the Ed. Group kept detailed reports of everyone who ever contacted them. Even if the place was destroyed, they had everything backed up some other place."

"So you're saying everything we did there was for nothing?" Derek said more than asked.

"No Der, we did do something. Davidoff was the only real mastermind left to my knowledge, and without him no one would be able to really bring back the group, without a lot of time and back up that is. Sadly though, there are a couple more labs around the country, much smaller, since this was the HQ, but they could still do some damage."  
"So you _are _saying we did all that for nothing," Tori said angrily. Kit just stood there for a moment looking at all of us.

"Alright, I know it might seem that way, but we really did make a difference. These other labs only have one or two small projects each, and Davidoff was heading those too, last time I heard. All the others are probably idiots, and without Davidoff babysitting, they won't know what to do and, hopefully, shut down on their own. Lauren, back me up here."

"I really think he's right," she said, moving to stand next to Kit. "I've heard a couple things about eh side projects, and they really don't seem too serious. But if they're still running, we need to make sure they shut down soon in case they really are problem causing. Davidoff only visited them every few months though, so they might keep going for a while without him."

"At lease tell me these labs are somewhere cool," Simon said. "Like in a dam forming Alkali Lake." **(X-Men people)**

"The only location I know of is in North Carolina, somewhere in the Appalachian," she said, smiling.

"Well, it's not a no for Alkali Lake," he said excitedly.

"But the question is do we go after the labs or other subjects first?" I said.

"Good point," Derek said. "Sure the labs might be causing problems, but what if these kids came into their powers while we're getting rid of them. If they're failures like Chloe, no offense Chlo, or Tori… and please do take offense to that, they could really endanger not only themselves and their families but the whole supernatural world."

"Again, good point," Simon said. "And how exactly are we going to deal with the subjects anyway? I mean 'You're a wizard Harry' doesn't really mean anything without proof."

"Exactly," I said. "Sure we could call them up and say 'Oh guess what! You're not a crazy schizophrenic! You're a necromancer!' Who the hell's gonna believe that? And it's not like these parents don't know what's really up with their kid, unless they got brainwashed or something."

"Chloe, you really do watch too many movies," Aunt Lauren said. "But no, no one got brainwashed."

"So, then what are we going to do," Tori asked. "Phones won't work, so it seems to me that our only choice is in person."

"Well," Kit began, thinking carefully. "I mean sure that'd work but it'd be more dangerous obviously. And we also don't know anything but the names and phone numbers."

"Uh hello?" Tori cried, pointing to herself. "Computer genius here. I can get addressed by hacking into phone records. Not even that hard." We all just stared open mouthed at her. "What? I tested myself a couple times." When we all just started at her doubtedly she added, "Okay, okay, I sort of dug up the phone records of a couple boyfriends… I was paranoid!" We all continued staring, then broke out into hysterics.

"Well anyway," Kit said, bringing us back under control. "If Tori can get the addresses, going in person probably is our best bet. Anyone against it?" No one said anything. "Then that's settled."

"We still have the labs to figure out," Aunt Lauren said.

"Oh yeah…" Tori said unenthusiastically.

"Wait, you said the labs were scattered around the country right?" I asked, addressed Kit, who nodded. "And all the subjects are spread out right?" Derek looked at the list and nodded, whether he did it out of habit or because he actually knew where the area codes were for, which wouldn't surprise me, I didn't know. "So why can't we just start at the east coast and work our way west, taking care of labs and subjects as we go?"

"God, that's so obvious it's pathetic we didn't think of it within ten seconds," Kit said, slapping a palm to his forehead. "And that'll work too, because we only know of the one lab in North Carolina."

"So that's our plan?" Derek asked. "Take a cross-country trip in a van, stopping to blow up a few buildings and tell kids their magical?"

"No one said anything about blowing up buildings," Kid said quickly, transforming mine and Simon's faces from excited to disappointed. "But yeah, I guess it is. Although we could probably get an RV or something, I know you kids hate the van. We still need to figure out when we're leaving though. Tori, how long do you think it'll take you to get the addresses?" Tori snatched the list from Derek and scanned it quickly.

"Probably only a couple of hours," she said. "Depending on the company's firewall strength and the computer power available."

"So then the sooner we leave the better," Lauren said.

"Actually, maybe not," Kit said, pondering something. "Tori and Chloe have virtually no training to control their powers, no offense, and Simon and Derek could always use more. Another three days or so of preparation both for them and the finer detail of our plan would be helpful. Who's up for staying awhile?" We all hesitantly raised our hands. "Then that's settled as well."

"What are we going to tell the others?" I asked.

"Just the situation I guess," Kit said. "Maybe call a little meeting tomorrow, or today actually. They obviously can't come with."

"Why exactly?" Simon asked. "I mean, Casey was in it same as us, they were after her too. And if they did trace us here then what'll they do with the others?"

"Casey wasn't really- Ah never mind," Kit said. "But really, a group of 13 people all traveling together, might get a little suspicious."

"Are you kidding me?" Tori asked, laughing a little. "I've gone on road trips with forty people, no one was stopped by cops or anything, and we had six RV's all in a group on the highway. Besides, we could probably pass for a messed up family reunion thing anyway."

"Still, it might not be the best idea. But I don't know, I'll think about it," Kit said. "For now just go back to bed, but be up by ten alright?"

"Yay! Sleep!" Simon yelled happily, jogging back towards the house. Aunt Lauren, who was only ever coherent in the early morning for about an hour, followed him sleepily. Kit started talking to Tori while Derek and I just kind of stood there.

"Well at least we have cars for this road trip," I said.

"It was only about a day of walking Chlo," he said, looking down worriedly as I yawned. "Come on, it's the middle of the night, let's get you to bed."

"Come on Der," I said, stifling another yawn. "I'm not five, I can handle being a little tired." I glanced at Kit and Tori. "Besides, I need to talk to Kit."

"About what?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nothing about you or me, or us," I said, reassuring him. "Not even werewolves or necromancers, I swear." I didn't see anything wrong with not mentioning that it was about witches and sorcerers.

"Fine, we can go ask Dad whatever it is you want to ask him then go back to bed."

"Actually… I think it might be better if I talk to him alone. It's nothing personal, really, not against you anyway, but I think it'll be better for your dad if it's only me there."

"Chloe…" he said, sounding really freaked now.

"Look, I just need to check to see if something's true, and I don't want to freak you out unless I know for sure that it is. Either way, I'll tell you when we're done talking alright?"

"Alright," he said, still sounding slightly suspicious. He leaned down to kiss me, then whispered "See you later," before walking back towards the house. I turned smiling towards Kit and Tori, then completely lost the smile when I realized exactly what I was going to talk to him about. I took a deep breath and walked over to them. Thankfully, their conversation seemed to be over, and they were just kind of standing their awkwardly.

"Uh… Sorry to interrupt," I said, coming to a stop next to them. "But… Uh… Could I talk to you for a few minutes Kit?"

"Sure," he said, a little too quickly, seemingly very glad I did interrupt. He looked at Tori and quickly said, "Um… Well thanks, Tori, I'll see you later."

"Sure," she said, sounding bored as she turned back to the house and walked away. Kit looked at my gratefully.

"Uh… you wanted to talk to me Chloe?"

"Yeah. Um… Well there really isn't an easy way to ask this, so I'll get straight to the point. Are you Tori's father?" He froze, just stared at me for a couple seconds, before he fell back against the railing, covering his eyes with a hand.

"Where did you hear that?" he asked, sounding like he was more than a little shocked.

"Oh…. One of the people at Andrew's 'safe house' sort of mentioned it." We had all sort of agreed that it was probably the best idea to keep the whole demi-demon thing to ourselves. Kit sighed, and stayed silent for another minute or so, before lowering his hand, sighing again, and looked at me.

"Yes Chloe, I'm about 99% sure I am. But you have to understand, I really didn't have…. That is… I wasn't exactly-"

"Okay really Kit, you can stop there. I'm pretty sure I know… Uh… Tori's mom… she for s-s-some reason w-wanted a hybrid spell caster baby, for some reason c-chose you to be the f-f-f-f-father, you didn't… c-c-comply, so she uh… acquired some of your... u-u-u-uh… and got Tori. And can we p-please pretend like that awkward c-conversation never h-happened?"

"Oh you got it," he said, obviously as uncomfortable as I was. "Diane was always a little crazy, and a lot obsessive, especially when it came to power. She wanted a powerful child, and she was going to get one. When she came to me, I obviously said no because she was a crazy bitch who I hated, but also because a hybrid would be so dangerous. Between the time that I refused and I left with the boys, she made some really strong comments that she somehow had… well succeeded. I mostly just brushed it off, thought she was just crazier than I had ever thought, but there was always a little part of me that thought she might have actually been telling the truth. Then when I saw Tori… I don't know, I just sort of knew she was… mine, if that makes any sense."

"It does," I said. We just kind of stood there for a few seconds, until Kit broke the silence.

"Do any of the others know?" he asked, sounding kind of scared.

"No, at least I'm pretty sure." He nodded, and rubbed his temples. "Kit, you _are _going to tell them right? They need to know, all of them. Especially Tori. You didn't see her after her dad, well the man she thought was her dad, gave her up to her mom. I've never seen anyone so upset. She needs a family, one who doesn't just treat her as an object of power.""

"I know, it's just… I'm still getting used to this myself Chlo."

"And I get that, but think about it, would you rather tell them now and let them sulk in their own rooms by themselves, or when we're all squished together in an RV?"

"Whoa, thanks for bringing that up. In that case, I'll tell them later today." He then got this really panicky look on his face. I smiled slightly at I put a hand in what I hoped was a sympathetic way on his shoulder.

"If it's any help, I'll take care of Derek and everyone else. But I think it really needs to be you that tells Simon and Tori."

"I know, besides I'll need to be there to attempt to control the power explosion that's bound to happen. But thank you Chloe, thanks a lot."

"You're welcome," I said. I was about to turn around and walk back towards the house, when a thought occurred to me. "Uh… You actually might want- well not want, definitely not want, but need to know something." I then gave him a short explanation of Tori's short thing for Simon, which just freaked him out more.

"Crap, this is going to be worse than I thought."

"Yeah, it's probably not a good idea to mention the last thing though, but in case it comes up… well just try to change the subject. But when are you planning on telling them, because I should probably tell everyone the same time, because then there isn't a chance of them overhearing and people won't get completely scared when things start breaking… Maybe you should take them outside."

"Yeah..." Kit said, spacing out and obviously panicked now. "I guess right after we talk to all the others about us leaving."

"Alright," I said, wanting to try to comfort him but not knowing how, so I settled for "Maybe we should both just get some sleep, we'll need it for tomorrow, I mean today."

"Uh huh," he said, still spacing as he just walked towards the house without another word. Poor guy, the reality must just be sinking in. But at least the freak out will be here and not when we're all packed together. I followed Kit, who if I didn't know better, was acting very zombie-like. Thankfully, Kit conjured up a little light ball when we got inside, so I wasn't terrified while walking back upstairs. Kit and I parted ways at the third floor, both of us going to a different hallway, which wasn't horrifying to walk down.

I saw that the light in Derek's room was still on and walked over, tapping the door with a finger lightly, having learned my lesson from last time. He opened the door within a few seconds and motioned me in. He shut the door quietly before turning to me expectantly.

"Relax, I'm getting to it," I said, smiling, then sighed, knowing his reaction might not be very good. "But you might want to sit down." He raised his eyebrows. "Der I'm serious, maybe even on the floor away from anything breakable."

"Chloe, you're seriously scaring me now." Still, he moved into the middle of the room and sat down, with me sitting a few feet away, just to give him some space in case he really did freak.

"Okay, so… No real way to break this to you gently, so… Kit is Tori's father, her biological one." He just stared at me, _again_, really all the staring has begun to get really annoying, before—bursting into laughter? And not his normal laugh, or actually like any laugh I've ever heard, it was just this creepy dry wheezing. It was seriously terrifying seeing it come from Derek, but also one of the funniest things I've ever seen, and soon I was laughing at, not with, him. **(I had just watched the season six finale of Buffy when I wrote this guys, and there's a scene exactly like this that is my favorite scene from Buffy ever that doesn't involve Spike.) **

"Hey, you're going to wake someone up," I whisper-yelled, slapping his arm as soon as I had mostly recovered. After a couple seconds he calmed down.

"Sorry, but these walls are pretty thick, even I can barely hear things, regular talking anyway, Casey blasting her music is loud and clear." That's all he got out before starting his creepy wheezing again.

"Derek! Please stop, that's the scariest noise I've ever heard."

"I'm sorry, couldn't help it. It's just… funny. I mean come on, tell me you don't find Tori having an obsessive crush on her brother hilarious."

"Alright, it is pretty funny. But I thought you'd be a little more freaked out."

"Yeah, it's creepy and kind of disturbing, but I'm actually not related to her. Now if I was Simon I'd be seriously freaked and… a whole bunch of other bad stuff. Oh God, is someone going to tell him and Tori?"

"Yeah, your dad is supposedly going to tomorrow, or today, after our little meeting with everyone else."

"Uhg, that is _not _going to go well." He then made an annoyed groaning noise and moved over to the wall, thumping a fist against it hard. When he saw my confused but amused look he said, "Casey is _still_ up and listening to music, and I'm tired and easily pissed."

"Well sorry Mr. Cranky," Casey said from where she was floating above the bed. "I'll put in some head phones. And do I even want to know what you guys are doing up?"

"Couldn't sleep," I said quickly. "I was going to go for a walk when I saw Derek's light on."

"Yeah I've heard that excuse before," Casey said, wiggling her eyebrows. "Somebody's hiding something…."

"Not really," Derek said, using his emotion lacking voice.

"Sure you aren't… Well this is boring, I'm gonna go back to playing Harry Potter Lego, _with _earphones this time. You guys go back to… whatever you were doing." She then popped out of the room.

"God she's annoying," I said, stifling another yawn.

"Alright, if we're going to tell everyone all this stuff tomorrow- or today- then we both need sleep." He stood back up and walked over to me, holding out a hand which I took.

"I'm actually not that tired," I said as he pulled me up, of course yawning again.

"Of course you aren't," he said, a fake-serious look on his face. "But even if you aren't you'll regret not sleeping later."

"Fine, but only because I know you won't stop bugging me until I do." I reached up to give him a hug, then kissed his lightly. "I love you."

"Love you too Chloe, but you're stalling." I laughed and smiled at him.

"Can't blame a girl for trying," I said, kissing him again. Then I backed away, saying "Goodnight," as I walked to the door. I crossed the hall and entered my room as quietly as possible. I quickly stripped off my sweatshirt I had worn over my pajamas outside and slipped under the covers, strangely enough falling asleep almost instantly.

"You ready for this?" I asked Kit as we sat at the kitchen table, slowly finishing breakfast, knowing that as soon as we were done we'd have to start our little meeting. Simon had been sitting with us, but left to go check his blood sugar a few seconds ago.

"No," he said as he stared into the cereal he was absently stirring around.

"Come on Kit, don't chicken out on me. You know it's what has to be done."

"Oh that's not what I'm worried about, the telling them part. It's the screaming and explosions that keep popping up in my head every ten minutes that I'm terrified for."

"Isn't there some power reduction spell or something?"

"Not one that doesn't knock you out for three days, although that might be helpful after I tell them." I laughed a little, but was honestly just as scared, and I wasn't even going to be there.

"Well whenever you're done stirring my cereal Dad, I'd be happy to finish it and we can move on," Simon said as he stood at the table. Kit mumbled some sort of apology before getting up, mumbling something else about grouping everyone up, and left.

"What's up with him?" Simon asked through a mouthful of cereal.

"I think he's just anxious," I replied vaguely. I was about a third of the way through picking through another muffin when Aunt Lauren came in.

"Are you kids ready? We're waiting on you."

"Sorry," Simon and I said. He shoveled the last few spoonfuls into his mouth before hurrying towards the stairs. I walked with my aunt and offered her the rest of my muffin.

"No, I don't want your deformed pastry Chloe," she said seriously. "But what's up? You only ever destroy your food when you're nervous." I sighed.

"I'm not sure if you already know, but you will soon enough. Just do me a favor and help me keep everyone who doesn't go with Kit in the room, please?"

"Chloe…"

"Relax, I'm just helping out Kit, it's got nothing to do with me."

"Okay," she said, still sounding unsure. We walked the rest of the way to the second floor in silence.

"Happy birthday," I said sarcastically as I threw my concave muffin at Derek.

"I've already have five of these today," he said, taking a bite out of it anyway.

"Now that we're all here," Kit said. "we have some things to discuss. When we were at the Edison Group HQ, Simon and Tori got a list of all the other Genesis subjects. We've talked and decided that we're leaving in a couple days to go find these kids and let them know what they are and explain things as well as trying to get a sense if they're over powerful 'failures' like Chloe and Tori, no offense." Tori looked like she was about to say something, but a punch on the arm from me made her shut her mouth.

"There are also small Ed. Group labs that are scattered around the country, working on small side projects and such. We're going to go around and take care of those as well. And that's pretty much it. Until we get all the locations of these kids, there's really nothing to do. But actually, last night, or this morning… whatever, you guys got me thinking." He was addressing Simon, Tori, Derek, and I now. "Claire, would you care if the kids, your kids that is, came with us? I mean, there really isn't any huge reason they couldn't come. Of course we'd be in RV's the whole time, so I'm not sure if-"

"I'm going," Charlie said, standing up randomly. "Claire, I don't care if you say no, 'cause you're not my mum. I've been in this country for eight months now, and all I've seen is Ohio, which is bloody boring." **(Alright, sorry for the "mum" and "bloody," but I love British words. And Ohio is not boring, but most people seem to think so, so here's the opinion of the majority.)**

"Same," Casey said, also standing. "Except for the in country for eight months and Ohio being boring part and being only in Ohio. Point is, I'm going. Bye guys." She waved at James and Julie.

"Hey I didn't even say they weren't going," Claire said, turning to Kit. "You promise they won't lose anything longer than a finger?"

"Mom!" James and Julie both yelled. Charlie made a weird choking noise like he was trying to hold in some comment.

"I think that'll be safe to say," he said.

"'Then you have to take Miles too, he needs the kids to keep him occupied or he'll start breaking things. Frank and I need to stay in case someone else wants to use the house."

"Yeah, I'm sure that's the only reason," Miles said softly. James got a terrified and disgusted look on his face and punched Miles in the arm. "But yay! It'll be just like my post-graduation road trip, except without the alcohol, strip clubs, gambling, and alcohol."

"Did you only go to Vegas?" Casey asked.

"Never been, but we spent most of our time in Kentucky." **(No offense to people from Kentucky, just the first place that popped into my head.)**

"Please make sure it's nothing like Miles' post-graduation road trip," Claire said seriously to Kit and Aunt Lauren.

"I don't think I even want to hear any more than that," my aunt said.

"Me either," Kit agreed, standing up. "Alright, then if we're leaving, we need to prepare. Miles, I'd really appreciate it if you could work with Chloe on necromancer stuff more, give her some control. Derek, you're pretty good. Simon and Tori, how about we go get some training in now?" They both said some sort of affirmative answer and walked out. I mouthed "good luck" to Kit as he turned around.

"Whoo hoo!" Charlie yelled happily. "This is gonna be awesome! Miles, you _have _to teach me how to blow up cars now, I might need it." Claire gave Miles a death glare.

"I told you Charlie, those were only remote control cars stuffed with firecrackers," he said quickly, smiling nervously.

"Well then, I have to practice teleporting now," Casey said, making her way towards the stairs.

"Wait, one second," I said quickly, and everyone stared at me. "Derek, have they gone out yet?" He shook his head and head and held up a finger. Ten seconds later, he nodded. "Alright… uh… Guess I'll just say the simple version. Tori and Simon are half-siblings. They don't know but Kit's telling them around now, so I suggest you steer clear and ignore explosions."

Everyone just continued staring at me. Then Julie started laughing.

"So she had a crush on her brother?" she yelled between laughs. I looked at Derek who looked like he was about to crack up with her.

"I swear Derek if you start that creepy laugh again I will kill you!"

"But it's funny," Casey said, moving back to the couch. "To me any way, it'd be beyond awkward for them."

"Well, that's it. Disperse," I said, and most people left the room.

"Did you know about this Aunt Lauren?" I asked her.

"I'd heard rumors, but Diane was always obsessive, and I figured they were fake. And now that I know them…"

"I know, it's really weird."

"Well I should go try to find a discrete RV rental place," she said, getting off the couch.

"Have fun with that," I called after her. Turning back, I saw that Casey had apparently rethought practicing teleporting and was flipping through the recorded list.

"Please turn on something with a higher than G rating," Derek said, following the highlighted bar. "I was stuck in a house for months without even hearing 'sucks.'"

"Hey you didn't have to live in a house for your whole life that didn't allow anyone to even say- Oh my God! I completely forgot about this!" She had stopped on some show called An Idiot Abroad, and within two seconds had clicked and started and episode titled "Mexico."

"This isn't some stupid cartoon is it?" I asked.

"No! Best travel show you will ever watch! And the funniest unscripted one!"

"I looked to Julie to see if it really was, or this was just one of Casey's weird opinions.

"It might be a bit exaggerated," she said, watching the screen. "But it is seriously funny. These two British guys make their complete idiot friend go on these trips to the Seven Wonders. They told him they're making a show just about the Wonders and he's the host, but they actually just wanted to show people what an idiot he is." **(Honestly guys, it's my fourth favorite show and probably the funniest thing on television. I've never heard my dad laugh so much or so creepily than when he was watching this. Go watch it and I guarantee you will at least laugh.)**

"Yeah, yeah, now shush, the poked by a stick part is coming up." We watched the show for about fifteen minutes before Casey turned around. "You guys have that list? I want to see if I'm on there." Derek took it out of his pocket and handed it to her.

"You're not," he said.

"Then why is there a phone number with my old area code- never mind, that was never my number. And that's not my- Holy shit."

"What?" we all said, alarmed by her tone. She held out a finger and scanned the list more carefully, her face getting more and more grave by the second.

"Damn it just tell us!" Derek yelled, he never did like waiting.

"There are five people on here with my old area code. I was-am best friends with two of them, know two others, and have never heard of the fifth." She looked up, seriously freaked.

"Go get your dad and mine," Julie said to Derek. "We got a problem."

"Oh, we've got more than one," he said. We just stared until running footsteps sounded on the stairs, and we saw Tori race by."

_Uhg, this is going to be so much more complicated than I thought_.

**So… You guys satisfied with how this is going? I am! So satisfied that I actually am going to keep this short and just ask for your guys' opinion. What are some nicknames that Chloe and Derek could have for each other, 'cause no couples just stick to names, but all the main ones sound really cheesy, and very un-Derek. Oh, and I also had like this whole page long thing that went on after Casey left Derek's room and before Chloe left, but I wrote it in study hall (just like I did for almost all of this chapter, and by the way, I fucking love having a study hall) and somehow that sheet got misplaced and I couldn't remember most of it so I just forgot about it since I wanted to publish this chapter now, although I really liked it. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it, and please review! I'm off to watch the newest Ben 10 episode now. Bye-bye!**


	8. The Story of CARP

**Happy summer everybody! And I'm sorry for taking so long, but I do have reasons. First, I really had to study for finals, because my dad knows how to bribe me too well and he used my grades this time. Second, in honor of the final installment of Harry Potter, I am rereading the entire series. I started with only 77 days until the movie opens, leaving me with about 2.5 chapters a day, which is a lot of reading now that I'm on the Order of the Phoenix. And no offense to all of you, but I'm putting HP before basically everything. And with only a month left until the epic finale (Which I am extremely excited but also dreading and want to start sobbing basically every time I think about it), I really have to step it up. Sorry if this chapter sucks, I typed it in waves and didn't look back on it at all. Please excuse and spelling/grammar mistakes as well as out of characterness. I do not own Darkest Powers.**

"Tori, come on. You should be gloating that you belong with the guys more than I do. It's freaking me out that you aren't." I was trying to get Tori to come out of her room, where she had been since Kit told her, eight hours ago.

"Chloe, just go away," she said from inside. "I told you, I need time."

"Then why won't you let me bring you food or something?"

"I swear, if you don't leave I will blow a hole through the wall where your head is."

"Just trying to help," I muttered, walking back towards the stairs to Kit and Derek. I shook my head.

"It's not your fault Kit, you know that. She's been through a lot, and I think the only thing we can do is give her some space. I'll keep trying if you want, but really time to adjust seems like the only option. But when she does, don't expect big hugs for a new daddy."

"No, I know," Kit said. "I'll be lucky if she even talks to me willingly again." Derek and I both started searching for a new topic.

"So what'd you decide with Casey and Frank?" Derek finally asked. They had all had a little meeting, to talk about how "coincidental" it was that a fifth of the subjects lived in Casey's old town, about an hour ago.

"Well, turns out her dad did use to work for the Ed. Group, something in the legal branch, but left with her before they could really finish the experiment. And she was an after-birth test subject Derek, wipe that 'But that isn't possible' look off your face. **(I felt like I had to explain that) **Anyway, the guy seems innocent enough, he would have known who the subjects were, so it's most likely not a coincidence that that many of them are there. We'll take care of the East coast things first, then move to Illinois and pay the guy a surprise visit. Probably the only way we'll get any real information out of him."

"Great, a state even more boring than this one," Derek muttered. "Got any idea on how long it'll be 'till we leave?"

"All depends on when Tori finishes the list. Once we get that, I'd say maybe two days."

"What happens if some of the kids are up in New York?" I asked. "We can't exactly go back there."

"I don't know, we might just have to send Miles and the other kids. But…. Speaking of not being able to go back, Chloe, I think it's time you called your dad." I froze and stared at him. I'm serious, he's obviously worried, what with the half a million, and we need to get that out of the way.

"Well I kind of doubt he'd believe her if she just called him saying 'Hi Dad, I'm fine, no kidnapping here. Get rid of that pesky reward please," Derek said.

"There really isn't another choice Der," Kit said. "Even though we're low on the Cabal's hit list, they have a lot of people, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had someone hanging around him. That rules out visiting in person, and an email wouldn't do anything, it could be sent by anyone. So we're going to have to do the best we can by phone."

"What about Skype?" I asked, suddenly remembering the dozens of teleconferences my dad used to have. "I mean proof of a healthy, unkidnapped me would help convince him. Aunt Lauren too."

"Alright, that would work. Skype is pretty secure. ** (Is it?) **But still, not many people openly talk to requests from people they aren't sure they know."

"So we call him, Chloe talks to him briefly, tells him a time to be on Skype and accept a call from her old email," Derek suggested. He looked to me. **(Okay guys, I have never used Skype, so just pretend that this stuff all is correct)**

"Sounds good to me," I said, looking at Kit for a final confirmation.

"Alright fine, but you take care of it, I have too much do anyway," he said tiredly, walking back downstairs. "Just use a cell phone."

I looked up at Derek and smiled excitedly.

"Alright, we'll go find someone with a phone," he said. I dragged him down the stairs, surprisingly finding no one on the second floor, and moved to the kitchen. Frank, Aunt Lauren, and Claire were all loot at a laptop.

"Please tell me you have your phone," I said to Aunt Lauren. She looked up at me, surprised.

"Yeah, strangely enough," she said, pulling it out of her pocket. "Why do you want it?"

"I'm calling Dad, Kit already said yes, and you need to come because he'll believe it if he hears your voice too." She excused herself from the other adults and followed Derek and I to a random room no one ever entered.

"I'm guessing you haven't used this since… well you know?" I asked her as I flipped open the phone.

"No, but I have checked calls, he's left several messages."

"Alright, here we go," I said, suddenly nervous as I reached my dad's number on the contacts list. Derek took my free hand and gave a reassuring **(also known as cheesy) **squeeze. I smiled weakly at him as I pressed the talk button.

He answered after three rings. "Lauren? Where the hell have you been? I've been trying-"

"Dad?" I choked out, already knowing it was him, and beyond relieved. He stayed silent for several seconds.

"Chloe?"

"It's me," I said, on the verge of tears now.

"Chloe, where are you? Tell me where you are right now, I'll come-"

"I kind of can't do that, Dad. No, I was never kidnapped… Not really." I figured telling him the whole story wasn't the best idea in the first place. He probably didn't even know about the whole necromancer thing. "I'll explain everything later. Right now I just need to make sure you believe me, so I'm going to give the phone to Aunt Lauren to prove it. I'm fine really." I gave the phone to her then.

"Steven?" she said. **(That **_**is **_**his name, I checked, and it was even in one of the short stories on her website, which you really should go read)** "Yes, it's me Lauren…. She's perfectly fine, better than that actually…. It's kind of a long story, which we'll explain later." I motioned to get the phone back. "Alright, here's Chloe."

"Dad, right now all I can say is that phones might not be the safest way to communicate. We're going to use Skype as a replacement. You know my old email address right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, then accept a call from it at around nine tonight alright?" That would give us about an hour to straighten out our story.

"Chloe…"

"Dad, please, this is the only way we're going to be able to talk."

"Alright, but I _am _getting answers."

"Yes, I promise. Bye Dad."

"Good bye Chloe." I hung up quickly so I wouldn't be tempted to say more.

"That went well," Derek said. Aunt Lauren and I just gave him a look. "What? It seemed like it did."

"Actually it kind of did, way shorter than I would have thought," I said. "Although, now we need to come up with a cover story. The whole supernatural world is probably too much for him, right?" Aunt Lauren nodded.

"One just for you or for the rest of us that were at Lyle?" Derek asked.

"Huh, good point. Well, at some point I have to go home, and when that happens I don't want just get rid of you, Simon, and Tori, so all is probably best. I'm guessing you already have some genius idea."

"Kind of…" I rolled my eyes before motioning for him to continue. "So, you were at Lyle House for a couple weeks, things seemed fine, then Liz disappears, we all get suspicious that the people running it aren't who they say they are. Then you get knocked out and locked in the crawl space, but by a nurse, where you somehow found the bodies, along with a nice collection of murder weapons. The people are obviously serial killers who only go for vulnerable messed up kids. You told Lauren, who then hatched a brilliant plan to get all of us out, but we needed to stay off the radar for a while in case they're set on murdering us all still." I just stared open-mouthed at him, and I think my aunt was doing the same.

"And _I'm _the one who watches too many movies," I said sarcastically. "Seriously Derek, where the hell did that come from?"

"Come on, it's more believable than the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs who went for fatter women to-"

"Okay, stop. Seen that movie, that guy was creepy. I did like Hannibal though."

"Actually, I hate to say it," Aunt Lauren said. "but I think it might actually work. I mean, it's way more believable than the whole supernatural world."

"So now I'm the only sane one?"

"No," Derek said, smiling. "You just analyze every little detail and find all the possible holes and challenge them. But honestly, _no one _is as criticizing as you when it comes to stuff like this, at least not your dad."

"He's right Chloe, Steven will believe it, I would even believe it."

"Fine, but if he doesn't then it's your problem."

"Then while you figure out the details, I'm going to check on Simon, make sure he's stopped hurling and his blood pressure is back to normal."

"Have fun with that," I said as he headed out the door. When Simon found out, like Tori, he went up to his room, and when Derek went up there the first time to check on him, he was leaning against the wall in his bathroom with a lovely mess in the toilet. I'm guessing from Tori having such a huge crush on him, or maybe because Kit didn't tell them all the details and he just got a really bad mental picture. Either way I don't really blame him.

So Aunt Lauren and I started planning. Derek came down a few minutes later, saying Simon was "sleeping," which I took to mean he was just avoiding his dad. He sat in with us, making suggestions and stuff, then gave a quick demonstration of how to use Skype when we realized we didn't know how to use it entirely. How he knew anything about it was a mystery.

Around 8:50, my stomach started rumbling, I hadn't even realized I was hungry.

"Have you even eaten anything since breakfast?" Derek asked, looking worried. I just mumbled an "I'm fine," which was apparently not very convincing. "Your stomach wouldn't be making noise if you were fine, and your just saying that 'cause you think you'll miss your dad. If I bring something in, will you eat it?" I started to protest but he cut me off. "I shouldn't be in here anyway, this is between you guys, plus he probably wouldn't like having some creepy random guy sitting in the background."

"You're not creepy," I said, shoving him. "Well, maybe for some people the whole wolf transformation thing might be a little weird, but in general you're not." He laughed.

"I'm still going, you're hungry and someone needs to keep certain other people from running into the room during another random lightsaber fight." That would have been Julie, Charlie, and Miles, who had proclaimed himself Darth Asian.

"Thanks," I said.

"No problem." He looked torn for a couple milliseconds, then got a "screw it" look on his face and kissed me quickly before getting up. "Lauren, you want anything?"

"Uh…. Sure, whatever you're getting Chloe will be fine. Thanks Derek." She seemed completely shocked the whole time, whether it was because of the kiss or Derek talking directly to her and being unnecessarily polite I didn't know. I raised my eyebrows at her as soon as he had gone.

"What?" she said innocently, looking back at the laptop. When I continued staring, she added, "I already said he was a good guy, Chloe, I just never knew how much he actually cared about you. And then him being nice was kind of weird too."

"Alright, that I'll give you." I looked back to the time on the bottom corner of the screen. 8:57.

"Just press it Chloe, he knows all clocks are not the same."

I gulped, then slowly moved the cursor to the "call" button **(Is that what it's called? Probably not, but be a nice person and pretend it is)**. I left-clicked.

Two hours later, I was back at Tori's door, even if it was 11.

My dad had accepted the call immediately, and it surprisingly went well. For some reason he believed our serial killer crap 100%. He agreed not to say anything about the "real" story, as well as call off the reward, saying that the housekeeper had forgotten to tell him that Aunt Lauren had taken me with her to some medical conference in the Caribbean, and there hadn't been any cell service. Yet again, I had no idea if that was a common thing in the Caribbean.

We did have to explain that picture in the paper to him though, especially when Derek showed up with food. Being the genius he was, Derek quickly explained how he and I had gotten separated from the group, and he was pissed and yelling because I hadn't given Simon back his insulin pouch and if we didn't find him soon bad things would happen. Dad didn't seem to believe that story as much as the serial killer one, which was crazy in my opinion, but it was kind of odd that a guy as intimidating as Derek would care about his brother that much. He was also smart enough to not mention anything about us being a couple, although Aunt Lauren kind of looked like she wanted to.

We ended the conversation by telling how we didn't know how long it would be until we could come back, if ever, because these "serial killers" would be really pissed and want to kill us all more for escaping. I told him that although we wouldn't be able to talk often, I would try to contact him every once and a while. Dad was never good at good-byes, much less emotional ones, so he just disconnected after saying "I'm glad you're okay, Chloe. I'll take care of everything here, talk to you later."

Anyway, back at Tori's door, I walked in without even bothering to knock this time. Kit had put a small protective charm on me, but we both were pretty sure her threats were just threats, and she had no intention of carrying them out.

"What the hell?" Tori yelled, jumping off her bed where she had been laying down on with the laptop she had borrowed from the computer room.

"You don't need to say anything," I said, walking in and closing the door. "I just came with food, my idea only." I slowly lowered the tray of macaroni I was holding onto her desk.

"Oh, thanks," she said, calming down but still standing there awkwardly.

"But, before I leave, are you sure you don't want to at least talk about it?" She sighed heavily and dropped back onto her bed.

"I really don't know why you expect me to say, Chloe," she said, head in her hands. "I just found out the guy I thought was my dad my entire life isn't, that I'm some messed up genetically altered hybrid, that I have a half-brother, and that I used to have a crush on him. Really? How would you react to all that?"

"I have absolutely no idea," I said, pulling out the desk chair and sitting down, mentally smiling and hold back the words "So you _do _want to talk."

"And I don't expect you to react a certain way either. Although I pretty much ruled out running up to Kit and hugging him screaming 'Daddy!'" That even got a small snort of laugh from Tori. "And I get you wanting time to think, I'm sure I would too. But just remember that we have to leave soon, and it would be best to get over most of the awkwardness around Kit and Simon before you're stuck in an RV with them for weeks." She stayed quiet for a few minutes, and I guessed that was as much as I was getting out of her now, so I got up and started walking towards the door.

"Chloe, wait," she said. I turned around and saw she was messing with her laptop again. In a few seconds, she pulled out a flash drive and tossed it to me. I, of course, dropped it. As I bent down to pick it up, she said, "It's got all the addresses for the other subjects. Can you give it to Kit, if he's still up?"

"Sure," I said. I lingered in the room for a few more seconds, then left. I quickly searched the first floor for Kit, since he was only ever there or in his room. Not finding him, I grabbed a Pepsi from the fridge and went back to the second floor, where Derek and I had been enjoying alone time, and by that I mean watching pathetic Syfy channel movies. Sadly, that was apparently over.

"'Ello!" Charlie yelled, looking at me as I walked back over tko my seat next to Derek.

"Why are you even here, Charlie?"

"Well that question can be interpreted many ways. Do you mean why I'm in the room, in this house, on the planet-"

"The room dumbass," Derek said, obviously not up for dealing with Charlie.

"Name calling isn't nice," Charlie said, smiling stupidly. "And there's a Star Wars marathon on, so why are you watching some shitty rip-off version of Journey to the center of the Earth?" He made a grab for the remote, but missed, then started ranting to himself. "I really want to know who started the term 'dumbass.' I mean really, what's that about? An ass doesn't have a brain, well, unless you're talking about the other term for a donkey, but then you're just calling someone a dumb donkey, and that's just stupid. Am I the only one who thinks about these things?" He looked at me and Derek, like he was expecting an answer.

"Actually," I said, thinking back to what he had said earlier. "Why are you here, Charlie? And by here I mean the house."

"Ah, that is a long tale that I don't want to get into… unless you change the channel to Spike so we can watch Star Wars." **(Spike is this channel aimed at guys that has Star Wars marathons every other weekend. And yes, I watch it, they have good movies.)**

"Fine, this was giving me a headache anyway," I said, sliding the remote away from Derek and flipping down a few channels before hitting Spike. "Start talking."

"Alright then, my friends, you are about to hear the story of Charles Alexander Rupert Pace, the third." He couldn't get any farther, Derek and I were laughing too hard.

"His initials are C.A.R.P." Derek said, still laughing.

"Whoa, I never noticed that!" Charlie said, completely serious. "Yes! I'm named after a fish!"

"Who in their right mind names a kid Rupert, even as a middle name?" I asked, still laughing at his very old-English-guy name.

"Rupert is a very respectable name in Britain, thank you very much. But I thought you wanted to hear this story, so shut the hell up!" He actually yelled ha last few words which was weird for him, and Derek and I did shut up.

"Thank you, now, where to begin… You guys want to know about my childhood or just the events that led to my coming here? Nah, never mind, I couldn't begin to explain what an awesome kid I was. Anyway, back to thinking… Oh, you remember when James said my last girlfriend dumped me because of imaginary peanut butter?"

"Yup…" I said, trying not to laugh, unlike Derek, who already was.

"Well I had just begun to use my powers willingly and not just at random outbursts right before I started dating her. And by the time she rudely and unnecessarily broke up with me, my powers were still kind of emotion based. Before you say anything, I did not mope about in my room crying hysterically, I was just sort of pissed. Stayed pissed for a few weeks, and during that time she had started dating this already really annoying guy who sat behind me in a study hall. And then I just had a really shitty day. My fish died in the morning, I wound up completely flunking a maths test, and people kept standing in front of my locker, snogging obnoxiously. It was just bad, then the asshole in study hall wouldn't shut up about how his uncle is some fancy rabbi, so I got really pissed, imagined a pencil blowing up in his hand and part of it becoming imbedded in his head. Then… well his pencil blew up and got stuck in his head."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, you killed a guy?" I said.

"No! A piece just got stuck in an ear. It would have been cooler if he did die, but nooo. Then my mom found out about the incident and put me on a place here, saying I needed 'proper training.'"

"She did know that you'd be sitting around watching Star Wars with no one to really teach you anything, right?" Derek asked.

"Hey, I actually did learn stuff, and Star Wars is barely ever on! There was this dude named George who was a sorcerer and was staying here and he taught me control and stuff. Then he had to go back to Canada for some legal reason and left a few weeks before you got here."

"So basically you got kicked out of the country because your mom felt you couldn't control yourself?" Derek asked. "That's all you needed to say."

"Well sorry, I thought it would interest you guys," Charlie said, turning back to the TV, where the ewoks had just shown up.

"Oh!" I said, remembering the flashdrive suddenly. I took it out and handed it to Derek. "Give this to your dad, I'll forget. Tori found all the addresses."

"Whoa, he said, taking it and slipping it in his pocket. "I wouldn't have thought she would do that stuff after… well after all that."

"Hey, at least she isn't having some destructive identity crisis or something." He gave me a lock that I had gotten used to recently. "Yeah, I know, I watch too many movies." He smiled and pulled me closer to him. We sat there and watched the movie until about halfway through the next commercial break, when Derek got up quickly.

"Be right back," he said, walking out of the room.

"Get me some Bugles!" Charlie shouted, never turning away from the TV. During the commercial where they sing about needing money in opera on a bus that Charlie was loudly humming along to, a hand suddenly clamped onto my mouth. I looked up quickly, about to start flailing, when I saw it was Derek and just gave him a weird look. He motioned me out of the room. When in the stairwell, I gave him the same look. He sighed, put his hands on my shoulder and turned me around. Simon was standing on the stairs leading up to the third floor, waving.

"What are you-" I began but was cut off when Derek's hand covered my mouth again.

"Charlie," Simon mouthed, then pretended to bang his head against the wall, which I guessed meant he really was not in the mood to talk to him. I nodded and Derek moved his hand from my mouth to my hand and pulled me down the stairs with Simon following. None of us said anything until we were safely in the deserted kitchen.

"Alright," I said, turning to Simon. "Should I even mention it?" I guessed that he would know that by "it" I meant his new family member. He did.

"I'd prefer if you didn't," he said, walking towards the fridge and pulling out whatever his eyes landed on.

"Blood-" Derek said but was cut off by Simon

"I know, I know, relax, I've got it under control." He finally closed the fridge and looked at the pile of what I hoped were sandwich ingredients. He picked up a lemon, gave it a weird look, then put it back into the fridge. "Anything of interest happen while I was up there?"

"You tell him anything?" I asked Derek, who shook his head. "Then only a few things." I filled him in on the whole Casey's dad and the weird number of subjects around him and summed up the conversation with my dad in a few sentences while Simon made his sandwich.

"You also missed a great story from Charlie," Derek said, actually smiling. "His initials are C.A.R.P. and he impaled a guy's ear with magic."

"Damn, that actually sounds worthwhile," Simon said, stuffing about a third of his monster sandwich into his mouth. After chewing he said something that shocked both Derek and me. "How's Tori?"

"Uh… What?" I asked, not sure if he was serious of not.

"How is she? I mean, this has got to be weirder for her than me. She's found out several seriously bad things. And I'm not asking because I have some special brotherly feelings for her. I just know she's freaked out and I would really like to know if any explosions are coming." I looked at Derek, who already gotten back his normal countenance.

"She's actually a lot better than I would have expected. Freaked out, yes, but she's not bawling in a corner or throwing things across the room. Sure, she threatened to blow my head off if I didn't stop trying to talk to her earlier but last time I was in there she was fine. She still hasn't really figured out how to react yet. And Simon, don't talk to her or even acknowledge her presence until she talks to you first, you'll probably make it worse otherwise."

He nodded seriously through another bit of sandwich. No one said anything for a minute or two while Simon finished eating. Once done, he got up and moved to the sink, passing a stool and bumping his leg against it.

"Ow, ow, ow!" he cried, hopping on the other leg the rest of the way to the way to the sink. I couldn't help laughing.

"Come on, you barely touched it," I said. Simon glared at me.

"Previous injury," he said, dropping his plate in the sink. "I was practicing a knock-back spell on a chair and it turned into a fly-towards-Simon-and-stab-him-in-the-leg spell. Although I guess it can be useful if I jump out of the way fast enough." He hobbled back to the table and sat across from me, next to Derek.

"So that was all the banging I heard for the past few hours?" Derek asked, sounding amused.

"No! Well my attempts at spells, the chair only came at me once. And I've actually gotten pretty good at some of them." He demonstrated by making an orange fly across the room into Derek's hand.

"Not bad," Derek said, tossing the orange back at Simon who started peeling it.

"I still can't manipulate stuff, just levitate and move it around. And I have to be looking at it. I've pretty much perfected some of the lamer spells Dad first taught me, and despite the chair incident, I've actually gotten a lot better at knock-backs, put a hole- Who the hell it that?" We stayed silent for a couple seconds and I heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

"Crap, that better not be Tori of Dad! Uhh… I'll be in here." Simon jumped up, winced at the pain in his leg, then hopped into the pantry. "Cover for me!"

"Derek and I looked at each other, both trying to think of something. After a few seconds, we both held out our hands at the exact same time and said, "Rock, Paper, Scissors, shoot." I went for rock, Derek held out paper. He wrapped his hand around mine.

"That's not a real win," came a voice from behind up. Turning around, we saw Casey walking into the room. "There is no possible way a piece of paper can beat a rock at anything. Rock is the obvious winner any way you look at it. Unless paper has some destroying power that initiates when it wraps around stuff. That's pretty damn terrifying if you think of it though."

"Simon, you can come out, unless you want to avoid being annoyed and confused," Derek said.

"Ha! My logic is too complicated for the college level kid to understand! I feel special. And he's in the pantry, isn't he?" Derek and I nodded. "Okay, Simon, don' open the door, I'll get it! You guys might want to move." Derek and I were both in between her and the door, still sitting at the table, but we moved quickly. Usually Casey just acted without warning, so when she actually gave one, it was a good idea to listen.

"She scrunched her eyes shut hard in concentration, took a deep breath, then… was opening the pantry with a triumphant look on her face.

"You weren't kidding," Derek said, looking from where she was now and then back to her starting spot.

"Of course not," she said, stepping away to let Simon out. J "Sadly though, right now that's the farthest I can really go. Without projecting first anyway, but teleporting while in astral form is really hard, and I need to kick something hard."

"Why is the kick necessary?" I asked. Casey shrugged before grabbing a random bag from the pantry.

"Any of you want to play Risk?" she asked, hopping onto the counter and opening the bag. "I tried to get James to play, but he was already in bed, saying his allergies were acting up and- Ahh, flavor blasted!" She spit out the goldfish she had put in her mouth and quickly switched the flavor blasted bag for regular cheddar, then stuffed a heaping handful into her mouth. "Who likes that stuff anyway?"

"I like flavor blasted," I mumbled defensively, and got a glare from Casey.

"Well for future reference they go on the other side of the pantry." She still hadn't swallowed the goldfish.

"Why do you want to play Risk when it's almost midnight anyway?" Simon asked. "It takes hours if not weeks."

"I'm bored and have a sudden urge to play Risk, time doesn't matter to me. So… you want to play or not?"

"No," we all said in unison. Simon continued to look at her though.

"Can I use you as a human guinea pig for my knock back spell?" he asked. She started smiling.

"Yeah! That sounds awesome, but outside would probably be a better place, Claire gets pissed if I wake her up in the middle of the night." She then walked out of the room and turned towards the back door.

"I didn't think she'd actually say yes," Simon said, sounding pleased anyway though as he got up and followed her. I looked at Derek, who was also looking happy.

"This I want to see," he said, standing up and moving towards the door, with me trailing close behind him. They were already out in the grass by the time we got out. Simon was smiling like an idiot.

"If this works, you know you'll be falling on your ass right?" he said, backing farther away from Casey.

"Shaman here, I can heal instantly if I want to," Casey said, readying herself.

"Okay… Ready?" She nodded. "Three, two, one." Simon flicked his hand and muttered something, and Casey went flying back about ten feet.

"Okay, not bad, but I've seen better," she said, not even wincing although she landed hard exactly as Simon said, on her ass. "I got flown about ten feet in the air and thirty feet back by George, and he even aimed it so I landed on the trampoline. Now that was awesome. But you want another go?"

"Sure," Simon said, obviously upset that that George guy did something way better than he did. They went back to their original positions, Simon started another count-down, did his spell… but Casey was on the other side of him, smiling.

"Thought I'd make it more difficult, and funner."

"Funner's not a word," Simon said before quickly doing his spell again, but Casey dodged it again and landed on the stairs of the patio, where Derek and I were sitting.

"That was clever," she said, laughing. "But I watch too many movies and know a distraction when I see one. Now try to hit me with any spell you got, knock back's aren't very exciting."

Derek and I sat on the steps for about an hour, having a great time watching Simon throw everything he had at Casey, who teleported out of his way almost every time and threw back insults and taunts. Simon finally got her with a levitation spell, that she actually got out of, but her shirt was left dangling six feet in the air. Luckily for her, she had a tank top on under it, but was still pissed. She tried a couple times to teleport up to it, but she could never make it that high and decided to just continue to taunt Simon about how he couldn't do two spells at once until she got bored and went inside. Knowing that it was already past one, the rest of us followed her in and went to bed.

**Soooo not worth the wait, I know. And since I started this chapter so long ago and just want to post this quickly, I don't have much to say. Just a question. What other kind of spells should Simon be able to do, because I don't remember any others really being mentioned, and if I don't know any, I'll just wind up using Harry Potter spells, has Simon has already said he can't do anything like them. Yeah… don't remember anything else. So bye, and I have no idea when I'll be able to update again, but hopefully it will be quicker than it took to do this one.**


	9. Run through the forest, Forrest

**I'm baaaaack. Hello to everyone who isn't completely pissed at me and decided to continue reading this story. I have no real excuse for not updating, I was really just sort of lazy and didn't want to work too hard at this. But lately I've had like no homework, which is surprising since I'm taking four honors classes, so I've come back to the story. And I recently got a laptop for my birthday, so I can now type without worrying about people reading over my shoulder. But school and just having a life might interfere with how much I can actually work on this. There are a lot of personal updates I could give you lovely people, but I'm kind of tired and just want to post this, so I'm not going to say any of them. Here's the chapter, don't own DP, and sorry for any errors or OOCness.**

I closed my eyes and concentrated as hard as I could, hoping against hope that anything but the worse would happen. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then a felt a faint presence and tried to draw it forward. Then-

"Are you almost done yet?" Tori's voice yelled from where she sat in the car. "I'm getting bored here!"

"Then you should have brought something to do!" Derek yelled back. "It's your fault so shut up."

"Yeah, look at Julie, she's perfectly happy, aren't you?" I said, opening my eyes and glancing at Julie, who was spread out on the ground a few yards away with a book. She just nodded and motioned for us to quit bugging her.

"Go look at some of these things if you're that bored," Derek suggested. Tori made an angry shrieking noise.

"You can't even read them!"

"'James T. Cirk,'" Miles said, examining a headstone near him. "With a 'c.' We're doing this one next!"

"Oh stop being such a Trekkie," Julie said, sounding annoyed.

"Well I can't read them," Tori cried.

"Can we please just lock her in the car?" Derek muttered.

"One more interruption and I'll gag her too," Miles whispered. Derek and I exchanged a look, both thinking of Tori's little gag-and-lock-me-in-a-crawlspace act. "Anyway, go back to working Chloe, you had it. Then after a little talk we'll move onto Cirk."

I smiled slightly before turning my attention back to summoning Jackson Dawson. With only a day and a half left until we were to start our road trip, Miles had decided to finally give me another lesson, in a graveyard. I had told him what happened before, but apparently he thought it didn't matter. I didn't think it would turn out well, but there was no denying I needed to have more control, around bodies at least, so I agreed. Derek, of course, said it was dangerous and reckless and wouldn't let me go without him, but never actually said not to go. He seemed to be thinking the exact same way I was. Then somehow, Claire decided to turn this into a grocery shopping trip as well, and was sent Tori and Julie with us.

After a short conversation with the old cranky Englishman that was Dawson based mostly on our "ridiculous and peasant clothing," Derek, Miles, and I migrated a few graves over to the Cirk guy.

"Oooh, this guy's more recent, 1931," Miles said. The cemetery we were in was old, mostly people who died in the 1800's. Miles had chosen it because if another mishap would happen, the bodies wouldn't really be able to do much since they would be mostly bone, and there would most likely be no one there, which there wasn't. There also hadn't been any mishaps, although it was difficult to summon the spirits and keep them from getting too close to bodies. "You want to try this one without the necklace?"

"No," Derek and I said together. I glared at him, and he quickly said, "Sorry, just agreeing that it's not a good idea."

"Alright then, just do what you were doing before."

I sat down cross-legged and began searching for the spirit of Cirk. I found it, and pulled it towards me until a deep voice said, "Who the hell are you?"

Opening my eyes and looking around, I found a fairly short man about Miles' age standing next to his grave in a suit.

"What's your middle name?" Miles demanded immediately. Cirk just looked confused.

"Uh… Timothy," he said, still confused.

"Damn," was all Miles said. Derek and I laughed.

"See Miles, no one would name anything Tiberius unless they were from a weird future world."

"I had a fish named Tiberius," he muttered, sounding annoyed.

"Well I don't mean to interrupt this obviously important conversation," Cirk said, tapping his foot on the ground. "but I'm still wondering why you people interrupted my perfectly happy afterlife. And why you are asking for my middle name."

"Meet necromancer in training, Chloe," Miles said, gesturing to me. When Cirk continued to look confused, Miles added, "Someone who can communicate with dead people, like myself. And your name is almost identical to a very famous captain."

"A fictional one that captained a spaceship on a TV show," Derek said, still sounding amused. Cirk still seemed perplexed, and Derek added, "Which of course you don't know much about because television only became popular in the U.S. during the late 20's."

"Where the hell do you learn this stuff?" Miles asked, sounding slightly disgusted.

"I read a book about the history of television a few years ago," he said shrugging. Miles just shook him head and looked back at Cirk.

"Anyway, thanks for your time. Now please start screaming every swear word or insult you can think of at this lovely little girl."

"Wait what?" I said, feeling just as confused as Derek and Cirk looked.

"Your problem isn't summoning, it's banishing, and this will help practice banishing under pressure."

"Well I don't like it," Derek said, giving Miles a pissed off look. I reached up and patted his thigh, the highest point I could reach.

"No he's right," I said, then turned back to Cirk. "Go for it." He still looked confused but after a few seconds started a steady stream of insults and curses.

It actually was very distracting. Not as panicky as when there's a re-animated body crawling towards you, but for practicing it worked well. It took me around three minutes to fully banish him, at which point Cirk had to start repeating himself and Miles had to join in and sing whatever song popped into his head in the most annoying voice possible.

"Okay, that actually wasn't bad," Miles said encouragingly. "Obviously it needs to be better when we come across a nice zombie that wants to eat one of us, but with the distractions and all not bad. I completely suck at reanimation as I have said before." He looked at his watch as he stood up. "Okay, Claire wants us back in two hours, so let's say one more guy and we call it a day." I agreed and got up to follow him.

"Well I really enjoyed Miles' singing," Derek said quietly, walking next to me as we trailed behind Miles.

"I seriously think he just made up half the things he sang," I said laughing, and looking up, to see him scratching hard at his neck. "Derek." I reached up and pulled his hand away, just in time to see a muscle jump on his shoulder. Another Change was coming.

"Oh, didn't even realize that," he said seriously, feeling his neck to see if it was bleeding. "This day just keeps getting better."

"At least Claire will probably let you off pre-packing duty, the making of the grocery list alone was a nightmare. Then just fake sick like James has been doing tomorrow and you won't have to do a thing." When he didn't say anything, I glanced at his face to see him deep in thought. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," he said too quickly, looking down and giving me an obviously forced smile.

"You seriously think that's gonna work?" He looked at me seriously.

"I'll tell you later, it's nothing you really need to worry about."

"Okay…"

"Hey!" Miles yelled from the grave he was kneeling by. "Less alive chats, more dead!"

"Seriously, it's nothing that important to either of us, possibly me just over thinking things."

"That's probably more likely," I said jokingly. He looked slightly offended, but I just elbowed him and sat down next to Miles.

The last summoning and banishing went better than the last few. We didn't really waste time with a real conversation, and it only took three minutes from when I start summoning to when the ghost disappeared. We then packed up all our crap and loaded back into the van.

"Okay, Derek and Chloe: cans, foreign foods, breakfast, beverages, and pasta isle. Tori and I have frozen, baking, dairy, meat, fruit, and deli. Then Miles, you have snacks and desserts."

"Yes! I have the fun job!" Miles gloated while taking his list from Julie. We were at the store, having our shopping assignments handed out. There were three lists, each typed, perfectly organized, and to the point of overflowing the page.

"That's only what Mom said to get, you guys can pick up anthing else you want. Meet back by the fruit in around 30 minutes." And with that, we each went our separate ways.

"You still want to know what I was thinking about earlier?" he asked as we made our way to the pop aisle.

"Yup."

"Fine, wait a minute though." He didn't say anything until we had started loading cases of Pepsi onto the cart.

"Okay, so you know how James has suddenly gotten 'allergies?'"

"Yeah…" I said, not sure where he was going with this.

"Seriously Chloe? He's constantly itchy, feels like shit. Casey even referenced Talladega Nights when she said he lost all muscle control."

"Oh!" I said as sudden understanding washed over me. "You think he's Changing." I thought back to everything Casey had said about James' sickness and compared it to what Derek went through originally. It wasn't hard to see some pretty big similarities. "Does Frank know?"

"I kind of doubt it." when he saw my shocked look, he rolled his eyes an added. "We've known James for two weeks and we think he's the kind of kid who would fake sick. And Frank's been busy, and I sort of doubt he'd be able to recognize the symptoms after such a long time. Or maybe I'm just over thinking it and he really just has a cold."

"Yeah, that's a possibility too," I said jokingly, although this time I kind of doubted it.

"That too," he said, taking the last 12 pack and putting it in the cart. "So… Cans next?" I nodded and we moved on with our half full cart.

"Okay, so is it just you guys, or is the entire Changing age getting younger?"

"I'm guessing it's just us. I have the messed up genes, and James turns 18 in November or something, so he's not really that early. And the books said that the Change- never mind, I'm just reciting passages from books again." I laughed before looking at the list of cans.

"We so need another cart," I said. "Be right back."

We finished the shopping trip in another 20 minutes, and were pulling back into the driveway 10 minutes later.

"I wonder if Dad's home yet," Julie said. Frank and Kit had left early this morning to pick up the RVs.

"Probably," Miles said. "It wasn't that far away."

"Still, Dad likes to- Whoa." We had pulled around the last corner and ahead of us stood two humongous RVs. As we pulled closer, Kit, Frank, and Casey stepped out of the blue one.

"Oooh, more practice," Casey said, immediately teleporting to the car as soon as it was in park.

"Julie! We have work for you!"

"Oh yay," she said, hopping out of the car with Miles following closely.

"You guys go check out the things," Casey said, pulling out bags. "I got these." Derek and I crawled out of the back seat and headed towards everyone else.

"Wait," I said when we were halfway there. "Where's Tori?" We both turned back and saw her still sitting in the car. "I'm goin.'"

"No, I got it," Derek said, leaving me slightly shocked. "You've had to deal with her enough lately."

"Okay, just don't piss her off. I would prefer if you stayed in one piece." He smiled and turned back around.

"What happened to Derek?" Kit asked as I went up the steps.

"Went back to the car," I said simply while looking around. "Wow, usually things seem smaller on the inside."

"It was," Simon said, rolling off a couch that seemed abnormally long. "You know the Weasley's car in Harry Potter?"

"Yeah…"

"Well it's like that, same size on outside, but it has a lot more room on the inside, thanks to super-secret spells."

"Or just normal ones in spell books," Charlie said, hanging off a bunk bed. "And these beds are actually quite comfortable."

"What happens if we get pulled over or something and they want to search the RV?"

"Easy fix," Kit said. He mumbled something and did some complicated hand motions, and within a few seconds, the couch Simon had been sitting on shrunk a little, and Charlie was pushed off his bed and hit the floor with a huge clunk.

"Why the hell did you do that!" he yelled, scrambling up.

"You guys need more practice," Kit said, shrugging while attempting to conceal a grin.

"Hey," Derek said, stepping inside. Surprisingly, Tori was right behind him.

"Tall guy, yeah you," Charlie said, sounding very pissed. "Yeah, get your ass over here, I need to see if you can fit on this bed." Derek just shook his head but walked over anyway.

"Tori, you want to help make the RV more livable?" Simon said. He'd been trying to make things somewhat less awkward between him and Tori, which is more than I can say for Kit.

"Yeah, sure," she said, trying to sound like she didn't care, although I at least knew she did.

"Okay, then you guys work on that, and Chloe, Derek, and I go help Claire with some crappy job."

"But Derek's gonna Change tonight, and we need to sleep for that," I said.

"Uhg! Come on! I am not doing things like vacuuming the house by myself!"

"Say you want to teach me something during the Change and then you can sleep too," Derek said.

"Yeah, but husband equals personal slave. Well come on, let's get this over with."

After four hours of pointless manual labor, which Frank complained about as much as Casey did, we had finally been set free. Claire had to go make dinner, since it was already eight and people were getting cranky.

"How's James?" I asked Casey as casually as possible while we were all sitting on the couch watching yet another random movie.

"Not so great," she said. "He's still got the fever and weird twitchiness, but now he's started getting all sweaty and headaches. So apparently he's actually sick. Hopefully he'll be better by the time we leave."

I glanced at Derek, knowing there was almost 0% chance James wasn't going to Change. He took out his phone and typed something, then handed it to me.

"Can you talk to Casey after dinner? It's probably better if we don't mention the possibility to James just in case." I just nodded. Then his arm started spasming.

"Okay, come on, either we eat now, or go take a nap," I said, standing up.

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

Turned out that dinner was ready as soon as we got to the kitchen, and we got to set the table. It was a fairly normal dinner, with the adults planning and us doing stupid stuff, which this time involved flying peas.

After dinner, mine and Derek's plan fell into place perfectly. Tori and Charlie got stuck with clean up, Simon and Julie decided to go play Mario Kart, and Derek was told to bring food up to James, leaving me with Casey.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" I asked as we walked out of the kitchen.

"Yeah, but I'm going up to my room, I want a different background."

"That's fine." When we got to the room, she flopped down on the bed, leaving me in the chair.

"Alright, shoot," she said, turning on her laptop and looking over the screen at me.

"Okay… um… Well I don't think James is actually sick."

"He's doing a bang up job faking then," she said, slightly amused.

"He's not faking it exactly, it's just not some disease or virus. Well… Derek and I think he's going to start Changing. Like tonight." She bolted upright.

"Seriously?"

"What you've been telling us sounds exactly what Derek first went through. And he's only a little young to start in the first place." Then she started laughing. "What?"

"You just made it sound like some sort of second puberty."

"It sort of is." She abandoned her quest for another background and scooted towards the end of the bed.

"So why are you telling me this?"

"Trust me, it wouldn't be good for James to go through that by himself. Even now, Derek gets freaked out about Changing by himself. Don't tell him I said that though." She laughed again.

"Does Frank know?"

"I don't know, he might have guessed, but he definitely said nothing about it around Derek or me."

"Okay, what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Just stay with him all night, and if he kicks you out, stay by the door. He might have figured it out already, but if he starts getting really twitchy, get him outside fast. I don't know if there'll be puking for him."

"There was puking?"

"And that wasn't even the worse part. It's not a pretty process." Casey looked a little freaked, but was taking this all better than I would have thought.

"What time do you guys usually go out?"

"Around 2 or 3, I think. I never really pay attention to the time."

"Well whenever you do, stop by James' room. Let Derek look at him and if he seems like he's going to Change, we'll go out with you."

"Sounds like a plan. You might want to go to bed soon though, it's tiring. Actually, I'm gonna go now."

"K, see ya," she said. I walked to the door, but only got it halfway open before she added, "And thanks, Chloe."

"No prob." I met up with Derek in the TV room.

"You think we should tell Frank?" I asked.

"It might be a good idea," he said. "Plus we should probably tell Dad or someone we're going to be out tonight. I can do it without you, go back upstairs." He had apparently noticed my badly stifled yawn.

"Alright, meet you outside at 2:45ish?"

"Sounds like a plan. Night." We kissed then went our separate ways on the steps.

By the time I got to the patio, Derek was already there waiting.

"So Frank decided this would be a good time for a training session. And he went to go check on James and will bring him and Casey out if need be."

"Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense." We only had to wait another minute for Frank to come out. He was supporting a half-asleep or really weak James, and Casey was walking behind them, looking much less calm than before.

"Come on guys, show us to your clearing," Frank said, sounding slightly urgent. For good reason too, when we reached the clearing, James was on all fours in seconds.

"Shit," he said, looking at James's sweat pants. "Claire will kill me if those get ruined, that's the expensive pair. Casey, take them off."

"Not something you're told by your boyfriend's dad everyday," she said, laughing nervously while pulling off one of James's shoes.

"Derek, you're good for a few minutes right?" Frank asked. He nodded, but I could see his arm twitching again. _I'm not sure how few those minutes can be_. "Alright, then you two go sit by the edge of the clearing, give us some room." We followed his instructions, and went over to lean against a particularly wide tree trunk.

"Is there supposed to be puking, or was that just you?" I asked quietly.

"I don't know, the books never went into much detail. I don't think there are any partial Changes though."

"Well that's good for James at least." After that, we really didn't say much until his Change was over. There was no puking, but that didn't make the sounds of pain and bones crackling any more appealing. After what seemed like a really short amount of time, James lay on the ground as a wolf, slightly bigger than Derek was in wolf form, and with a light tan coat with parts tinged with gray and darker browns. **(If you type in "wolves" in Google images and go to 15****th**** picture, he's supposed to look like the middle one.)** I was almost tempted to laugh, because it was weird that I was actually describing James as having a coat.

Frank sat next to his son talking for a few minutes, then walked over to me and Derek.

"Ready?" Again, Derek just nodded. We moved into the middle of the clearing, where Derek stripped quickly and handed his clothes to me. "You up for trying to Change multiple times tonight?"

"Like how many?" Derek asked, rolling his shoulders as started getting into position.

"Not many, three tops."

"Sure…" he said unenthusiastically. I can't really blame him though, it was bad enough watching the Change.

"Then go ahead and start whenever you're ready."

For the most part, the first Change didn't seem to be any different from normal, even with Frank's little tips. It definitely took less time than the last few, but that was about it. Not wanting to waste any time, Derek only rested about two minutes before jumping into a forced Change back to human form. That part involved a bit of a lecture that I honestly didn't listen to much, since I couldn't really figure out how to "pull hair back in" or "elongate limbs." It took longer to get all the way back to human than when the Change just came naturally, but Frank said he did well.

Derek was exhausted at that point, and Frank left us to go talk to James, who had started stumbling around.

"You want your pants back while you're recovering?" I asked, smiling and holding them out. "I think Casey's looking at your ass." As usual, he ended up naked. He was lying on his side with his back to Casey, and a leg covering up the front on my side.

"Oh, forgot about her," he said, taking the pants then laying on his stomach and just using them as a blanket. "Probably should stop shredding boxers during each Change though, those really add up."

"Yeah, but going commando in random woods probably isn't the best idea either. You could do a towel wrap thingy?"

"Yeah that'd probably work. Good idea."

"Thank you." I meant to say add some witty comment, but Frank came back then, and I sort of had none at the moment.

"Now here comes the really ha- difficult part," he said, sitting back down. "Changing without the Change coming on takes a lot when you're just starting out, I'm not gonna lie. But considering how well you did on the forced back, and that you've been doing fine Changing on your own, it might not be as bad. And if James is still going with you guys, I'm going to need you to tell him all this stuff Der, which I realize will be weird, but too bad." Then came another spiel I zoned out of. Frank was right though. The only time Derek had Changed without the actual Change had been before he came after us at the Ed Group headquarters, and that was with stress powering everything. It took even longer than forcing back into human form, and all Derek could do afterwards was collapse on the ground.

"Nice job buddy," Frank said, awkwardly patting Derek on the back. "I mean it too, way better than I did the first time. I'm going to go teach James how to take five steps without falling on his face, then we'll get to the fun stuff."

Derek and I sat there watching James's walking training, which was possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen. Casey apparently thought I was too, and started rolling on the ground laughing every time he fell down. It took like 10 minutes, but eventually James was able run several laps around the clearing with no problems.

"K, girl, get over here!" Frank yelled. "Derek, you and James go down the path to the next clearing, I'll be over there in a few minutes."

"This should be fun," I mumbled, patting Derek's head then walking over to Frank.

"Okay, we're going to test their wolfy powers," he said. "You guys are going to run all over the place, then find a nice place to hide out waiting for them to hopefully find you. We'll do that twice then come back here. If they don't find you in 10 minutes though, just go to the patio again." We both nodded. "Cool, now scat!" When we just began to walk away, he yelled, "No, run! Run through forest Forrest!"

I think Casey rolled her eyes with me as jogged back to the house on the path. Once we reached the end of the trees though, we both stopped.

"Screw Frank, I'm not running all around the yard for ten minutes," Casey said, catching her breath. "Hopefully we won't happen upon any 'run for your life' situations on our little road trip. Otherwise I'll be the first to go, maybe after Julie."

"Yeah, I'll be right there with you. We can trip up Charlie though, that might give us a few more seconds." She laughed at we walked towards the dock. "So where's a good place to hide around here?"

"Well there's Julie and I's super-secret hang out spot," she contemplated. "But if I take you or lead the guys there, it won't be super-secret anymore. Hmm… If you can climb trees we can try one by the garage."

That's what we ended up doing. By the time we reached a spot to sit though, the lack of sleep was starting to get to me, and there wasn't much conversation to be had. The guy found us within a few minutes though, and we climbed back down. Frank had also Changed into a gray wolf that was larger than both Derek and James. **(See first picture on the wolves Google search)**

"Go sit somewhere and don't look at where we're going," Casey said. "Five minutes then come after us." They all sort of nodded, which was just sort of funny looking, and then we walked off around the other side of the house. Once out of ear shot, she said, "You want to really mess with them?"

"As long as it doesn't involve running, sure."

"We can teleport onto the second floor balcony. I'm not going to kill us," she said, seeing my freaked out look. "Seriously, I did that for like an hour yesterday. I got Julie up there with me too, so you wouldn't be a guinea pig."

"Fine, but we have to go over to the lake first, see if we can convince them we went through the water."

"Oooh, I like the way you think. We better walk pretty quickly though."

We got to the lake with a minute to spare, then Casey grabbed my arm, turned around, and we were on the balcony. It was weird, there had been no really sensation of traveling, we were just there all of a sudden.

"Cool huh?" she said, sitting on a chair.

"Very." I sat down on one next to her. "Now just don't move or talk."

"Won't this be an exciting ten minutes."

They didn't find us, unsurprisingly. We could see the patio from our stop, and teleported back down when we saw them heading that way.

"We're not telling you where we went," I said, trying not to laugh at the expression that could only be described as frustration on Derek's face. "So back to the clearing?" Frank sort of nodded and we followed him back down the path. Frank went into the woods to Change back, then Derek tried another forced Change, which did go better than last time. We were dismissed to go back inside, since James would have to wait for the Change to come again before he could be human again.

"So could you understand each other like in some sort of wolf language, or just by putting commands to actions?" I asked.

"It was really weird. I wouldn't call it a language, but I just sort of knew what they meant whenever they barked or something. And I do realize how stupid that sounded."

"Yeah, it was. But at least now we have the Change out of the way for now, and you got in a run."

"Where did you guys go that second time?" he asked, sounding really intrigued.

"I told you, I'm not telling."

"Come on, Chloe."

"Nope, you have to get used to not knowing everything Derek."

"Yeah, but what does this have to knowing everything. I just happen to be really curious at the moment. Come on, please?"

I just rolled my eyes, smiled, and kept walking.

**Very boring, not worth the wait at all, but it's another filler chapter. The next one might be sort of boring as well, but once they get on the road, I promise things will get more interesting. And I honestly don't remember most of this chapter, so I'm going to leave it like that. Review please or PM me with any questions, about the story or just random crap, I don't care. I'll hopefully update soon, but who knows. Again, review please, and bye.**


	10. So apparently just a cracker party

**Happy 2012! My resolution… Well I don't really have one, but I'll try to update more often, how's that? Yeah… I'll just get to the chapter now. Sorry for out of characterness, spelling/grammar, and I don't own Darkest Powers.**

"That's pathetic! You would've been dead by now!"

"Don't listen to him," Julie said to Simon. "He's just excited that he can act like a drill sergeant."

"Still, I think he might be right," Simon said, trying to talk with Derek's arm around his neck.

After almost an entire day of basically irrelevant mini jobs, Claire had finally stopped bossing us around and set us free. Only two seconds after we were let off duty, Frank called us all outside. Apparently, we needed to learn basic self-defense, as well as how to use explosives and a variety of weapons. Frank had really started taking advantage of his job though, and had even called people maggots and yelled for us to drop and give him 20. I still wasn't sure whether I should be laughing or running away.

"I still don't get why we're doing this," Tori said. "I mean, if I was attaching someone, I'd just get behind them and hit them on the head with something."

"Well, not all the bad guy's henchmen are as smart as you Tori," I said sarcastically.

"Yeah, still, that's enough hand-to-hand," Frank said, letting go of Charlie, who fell to the ground with a weird shriek. "Now that we covered that and weapons, here comes the fun part. I'm going to turn you all into little pyros."

"Hey, my dad did that to me years ago," Casey said. "Now come on! I want to blow things up!"

"I'm getting there! Anyway, since none of us are in contact with the FBI or a bomb squad, all we can use are smaller homemade stuff, they still work pretty well though. And no Casey, I'm not telling you what's in them." He handed us all a little white plastic tube sealed off on both ends. "Just, don't drop those, they might blow your feet of. Now these are one of those where you stick a string in there, run it out some, take cover, and then light it and it then makes a nice boom. We're only lighting one though, because I don't trust you guys with actual explosives yet."

"Then what are these?" James asked, shaking his tube.

"Sand. Now go back to the patio, these things are never very predictable." We headed back towards the house as Frank set up the bomb. He ran back to us, letting out some of the cord as we went along. "Okay, this might be loud, like I said, they're unpredictable. Three, two, one!" He lit the end and a little spark went traveling down it. There was a few second gap before the huge _boom_ went off, accompanied by a bonfire sized ball of fire.

"Please let me set one off!" Casey said once she had stopped laughing creepily.

"Hell no, the closest you're ever gonna get to an explosive is a chemistry class." Casey started laughing again. "I'm serious guys, don't let her within a few feet of one."

We spent the next few minutes throwing our little pipes, lighting fake det cords, and running like maniacs away from them before they "exploded," which was really just Frank going "BOOM!"

"Well a few of you probably would have died a few times," Frank said as we wrapped things up. "but not bad. If everyone runs and can duck faster than the Dodgeball guys, you should be fine. Now go inside and enjoy your last day in a home without wheels. Dinner's in an hour."

"I call the TV!" Simon yelled once we got inside, running upstairs.

"No, I cannot take another cooking show!" Derek said, racing after him.

"There's an Avatar marathon on tonight!" Julie screamed, and she, Casey, and James went sprinting after the other two, shrieking for the remote.

"Well I guess I know what I'm not doing tonight," I said.

"Don't worry, they won't be up there for that long," Charlie said, following Tori and me to the kitchen. "Oh, and be over by the trampolines at 8."

"Why?" Tori and I asked with the same tone of suspicion.

"You'll see."

"Why do you people have to be so cryptic?" Tori thought out loud.

"Hey Chloe, look what I found!" Miles said as we entered the kitchen. He turned around in his stool, clearing the view for the one next to him.

"Liz!" I yelled, running forward, then stopping, not knowing how to greet your non-solid dead friend.

"Wait, Liz is here? How'd she get here?" Tori said excitedly.

"Who's Liz?" Charlie asked.

"It's a long story that would better remain a mystery," Liz said. "And hi Tori."

"Liz says hi," I conveyed to a now smiling Tori.

"Actually you guys came in at a good time," Kit said from the table, where he was sitting with Aunt Lauren. "Do you guys care if Liz comes with on our road trip?"

"No, of course she's coming," I said, then looked back at Liz. "I would have summoned you if I could." **(I don't really want to make up something for what happened to Liz, so let's just say she disappeared and has now reappeared.) **

"Well now that problem's fixed," she said, reaching onto the counter and grabbing a pony tail holder. "This was mine, obviously I wasn't very attached to it, so the connection isn't that strong, but as long as I'm close, it'll work." Charlie was now poking Tori insistently asking who Liz was.

"That's really all we need anyway," Miles said. "With your power it'd probably work long distance too. Plus it's a fashionable accessory." We all just stared at him until Liz broke the silence.

"Never say that again."

"So how's it been Liz?" Tori asked, being careful to sit far away from the place where my and Miles' eyes were directed.

"Who the bloody hell is Liz!" Charlie shouted.

"Charlie, shut up!" Tori yelled back at him. Liz jumped off her stool.

"I got this guys," she said, running behind Charlie and picking up a random note pad on the table. She then slammed it into him head.

"What the-"

"Claire alert!" Miles muttered and Charlie stopped midway through his potential swear, right before Claire walked in.

"And that was Liz," I said. "She's a ghost friend from Lyle House who happens to be a poltergeist."

"Who is joining you on your road trip," Liz said.

"Who is joining us on our- what?" I said, looking back at her.

"Well duh, I didn't spend all this time finding you guys to just sit here once you leave."

"And she'll be amazingly useful," Miles said. "An invisible scout who can also walk through walls and provides silent reports, really, there's no way we could get luckier than that."

"Although other necromancers would complicate that slightly," Kit said.

"Well I can always knock them out, they'll wake up hours later thinking they fell asleep," Liz said, slashing her notebook through the air, pretending to knock someone out.

"Yeah we're not repeating that," I said.

Tori, Liz, and I spent the remaining time until dinner talking. Charlie just sat there switching off between listening to the adult's conversation and ours. The adults kicked us out once we had all gotten some food, telling us to eat somewhere else so they could go over their long check lists again.

"So why are we meeting by the trampolines at 8?" I asked Julie as we all settled onto the couch in the TV room.

"Shhhh!" she said dramatically. "Do not question it, just do it. Don't worry, it's fairly normal, but the adults aren't supposed to know."

"Again, you guys are so cryptic," Tori said.

"We work hard to be so," Casey said, stuffing mini corn muffins into her mouth.

"_Balls of Fury _or _Silence of the Lambs_?" Charlie, who had the remote, asked.

We decided on _Silence of the Lambs_, which was already a third of the way through. Once Derek and I finished with our dinner, we both left to put our plates back down in the kitchen. But instead of returning to the TV room, we went up to the third floor to finish packing our stuff. Well, partially.

"Okay, we go down in shifts," Charlie said. We were now all in the TV room, with five minutes to 8. "And we go through the front door, because it's less squeaky and farther away from them. Julie, you have the stuff?" Julie held up a large basket thing. "Alrighty then, Tori and me will go first, then you guys decide the order for the rest of you."

Tori and Charlie quietly headed towards the stairs. Simon was attempting to see what was in the basket, which seemed to really piss of Julie.

"How long are we going to be out there?" I asked Casey. "Because I'm already tired."

"Let's put it this way," James said. "If anyone falls asleep, they will be drawn on and then slapped awake. Or depending on who it is, we might test that hand in warm water myth."

"Okay, so no falling asleep. But really, how long is it going to take."

"Who knows," Casey said. "Probably not past 1:30, because the hologram spell would have worn out by then. But if you really don't want to stay, you can leave, but you'll be missing out."

"It's been five minutes," Julie said. "Derek and Chloe, go. Remember, front door, quiet, and meet at the trampolines."

Derek and I left the room, with Liz floating behind us, and reached the front door with no incidents. Derek then opened the door, and we walked outside. Rounding the house, we saw the two trampolines, one of which Charlie was jumping on enthusiastically, while Tori sat cross-legged in the middle of the other.

"Don't get too comfortable," Charlie said as Derek and I climbed onto Tori's trampoline. "As soon as everyone else gets here were heading out."

"I don't see why you can't just tell us," Derek said.

"Because it's not as much fun," he said simply, starting to run around in circles.

It took ten more minute for the other four to make it out to the trampolines, at which point I had begun to get dizzy from Charlie's unending circles.

"Alright, off the trampolines," James said. "We need to disappear quickly."

"Wait, Charlie, where's your guitar?" Julie asked, looking around.

"Right there," he said, pointing towards the edge of the trampoline, where an acoustic guitar had suddenly become visible.

"Since when do you play the guitar?" Tori asked s Charlie slung it over his shoulders.

"Since ever."

"Yeah, he's like the Darren Criss character of our group," Julie said.

"Hey, then I want to be the Joe Walker character," James said. **(You guys aren't going to get this unless you've seen a Starkid musical, which you all should.)**

"Babe, you've always been a Joe Walker character, except you don't sing," Casey said. "And don't look nearly as good in tights, or a dress."

"I don't even want to know how you found that out," Simon said.

"It's actually a funny story," James said. "But we need to go. Levitation crew assemble!"

"You're still not Nick Fury buddy," Charlie said, moving towards a trampoline with Julie.

"Yeah, you need an eye patch and several superheroes to pull that off," Casey said, walking towards the forest.

"Why can't I have normal, non-comic crazed friends?" Julie asked herself before she and Charlie started levitating the trampoline.

"Well come on," Casey yelled, already 50 feet away.

We all followed her towards the trees, but as she reached them, she turned sharply towards the lake. After another minute of walking, we arrived at a large path that cut through the woods that no one saw before we were right next to it.

"Start picking up sticks," James said as we walked into the tree tunnel.

"Why do we need sticks?" Tori asked, picking up a three foot long one by her feet.

"What else are we going to make a fire with?" Julie said semi-sarcastically.

"So we're having a fire?" Derek said.

"Yes… Didn't- Oh, yeah, we probably shouldn't have set Casey and Charlie on fill in duty."

"It was pretty stupid," Charlie said.

"You know how we love our crypticness," Casey added.

"Well then," James sighed, looking at us. "Yes, we are having a fire/trampoline/marshmallow/smore/cheese and cracker party."

"Actually Mom already packed the cheese, so all we have is crackers," Julie said, pulling a box of Ritz from her basket.

"So apparently just a cracker party," he said.

"Hurry up!" Casey whined. "I want to burn things."

We followed her again down the tunnel, picking up sticks as we went. We eventually reached the end, and walked out into a large clear spot of grass right next to the lake.

"Impressive," I said, going over to dump the few sticks I had collected into the fire pit, which was surrounded by logs.

"Thank you," Casey said.

"What are you talking about?" James said. "Me and Charlie carried all the rocks and logs, and Julie told us where to put them."

"Yeah, but had the idea _and _broke it in," she said, moving towards some bushes. "Now where are those gourds?"

Charlie started the fire as soon as all our sticks were in place. We then took our seats around it.

"So we're just going to sit here?" Tori asked, throwing a rock into the fire.

"We could go skinny dipping if you prefer," Charlie said, winking and laughing.

"Well if anyone wants to have a flaming stick fight," Casey said, pulling a flaming stick out of the fire. "I'm all for it."

"You can heal burns?" Simon asked.

"'Course."

"Then sure, just don't burn my shirt."

It was actually pretty awesome to watch. They were sprinting around the fire parkour style, jumping over logs and occasionally us, and every time the sticks collided a shower of sparks fell all around them. At one point, the hood of Simon's sweat shirt somehow caught on fire and all he did was a couple of fancy ninja rolls, putting it out quickly, then jumping back up. The whole thing only lasted about eight minutes though.

"Bored now," Charlie said within 30 seconds of them sitting down.

"Yeah, we need to do some cliché camping crap," James said.

"I've got a ghost story," Liz said, floating near Tori's head.

"Liz has a ghost story," I said to everyone else.

"Oooh, a ghost's ghost story," Charlie said. "Tell it!"

"Okay, Chloe start interpreting, but don't give anything away, and no emotions."

So Liz told her story, which was basically Child's Play except with a stuffed panda that haunted a mall. It was random to say the least, but surprisingly creepy.

"Wait, so what happened to the dog?" Derek asked.

"The stuffed one or the real one?" Liz asked.

"Both," he said once I had translated.

"Well thankfully the real one only got part of his tail chopped off." Everyone looked extremely relieved. "But when the panda took the stuffed one, he brought it back to the closed down arcade and put it in the reanimating pinball machine to make the dog his accomplice."

"Oh, poor Randall," Charlie said.

"Poor Annie," James said. "She lost her doggy." Casey patted his shoulder as she tried, and failed, not to laugh.

"Okay, time to break out the smores," Julie said, taking some graham crackers from her basket.

For the next hour or so, we all sort of did our own thing. Somehow, Casey and Julie got really hyper and started running around in circles on the trampoline while mixing up the national anthems of Canada and Genovia. **(You know, from Princess Diaries? True story by the way, it was really fun.) **Charlie, James, and Simon started singing classic campfire songs, fairly well too. Tori, Derek, and I just sat sort of sat there, eating smores and crackers, playing one of those hand slapping reaction games.

"Hey, anyone want to play extreme spoons?" James asked after he and the guys had finished the entire _Found a Peanut_ song.

"Nope," Tori said, taking the opportunity to slap my hand.

"How 'bout kick the can?" Simon suggested. Casey immediately stopped singing a very pitch version of the Charlie the Unicorn "Put a banana in your ear" song and attempted to jump off the trampoline, but slipped and rolled off.

"I'll play," she said from the ground. James was already at her side before she could get to her knees. She brushed him off though. "I don't like being a damsel."

"Anyone else?" Simon asked, looking at the rest of us.

"We don't have a can," Tori said.

"But we do have a box," Julie said, pointing to the Ritz box which Tori, Derek, and I had emptied.

"Then sure," Tori said.

"Cool," Charlie said. "Now someone fill that thing with sand and fireproof it." All of us just stared at him. "Fiiiiiiiiine, I'll do it." **(He's filling it with sand so it doesn't just fold in once it's kicked.)**

It got pretty intense. With the surrounding trees, there were lots of places to hide and the fire shadows distracted the guard person so there was always a window to run out. James, Charlie and Casey took it really seriously and at one point Charlie punched James in the jaw to keep him from saying "One two three Charlie!" It didn't work, and then he got pissed and made the fire blow up to about twenty feet high. We kept going until about 11:30, at which point Derek kicked the box into the lake.

"Anyone else getting bored?" Julie said after we had been staring at the fire for three minutes.

"Yup," Tori, Derek, and I said. We were apparently the boring people.

"Fine, leave then," Casey said, poking the fire with a stick.

"Well I can't get rid of some of the holograms without getting rid of them all," Julie said. "Plus they'd all die when I fall asleep."

"And let me guess," Charlie said. "There aren't enough anchovies to make more?"

"Nope."

"Damn," Casey said. "We better all go in then, the last thing we need is Claire pissed at us. You know how she feels about late nights and flames."

"And it's always worse when there's a big event," James said, shoving the basket at Julie.

"You carry it, super-strength," she said, turning it over and putting it on his head, causing the few remaining snacks to fall to the ground. "And you might want to pick those up."

Charlie put out the fire and we left James to clean up the rest, Simon, Tori, and Julie levitating the trampoline back. He caught up with us after a few minutes.

"Where'd Charlie and Casey go?" he asked.

"Well Charlie said something about skinny dipping, and ran off, the Casey followed him sing something about condors," Julie said. "I was kind of scared to follow either of them."

"WHAT?" James yelled, running down the path.

"Ahhhh, this will be a fun road trip," Tori said.

We dropped off the trampoline then went back inside, finding Casey and Miles in the kitchen making popcorn.

"Finally, what were you people doing, crawling?" Casey asked. "Where's James?"

"Seeing if you're skinny dipping with Charlie," Julie said, taking a handful of popcorn.

"That's nice," she said, looking at the microwave. "Come on, popcorn, pop!"

"Why are you in such a hurry? It's already like midnight," I said.

"No shit Sherlock," Miles said.

"Ignore him Chloe," Casey said. "He's just cranky because I made him pause his Star Wars marathon."

"I'm not sure if that was a good idea, I really shouldn't encourage your Harrison Ford obsession."

"It's not an obsession, and it's not over Harrison Ford, just Han. But seriously, how can you not love the guy?"

"Han's annoying, he's too cocky," Tori said. Simon stared at her in disbelief.

"How can we be related?" he said, shaking his head. "Anyway, put another bag in, I'll watch with you."

"Well you guys have fun, I'm going to bed," Julie said, leaving with Tori.

"You're not on Return of the Jedi are you?" Derek asked.

"Yup."

"Then I'm going up too, Ewoks suck." **(That's not my opinion, I love those guys, it's Hugo Reyes')**

"I like the Ewoks!" Miles said.

"Well they do kind of suck," I said, following Derek out of the room. "See you tomorrow guys."

We went up, debating on who would get stuck with waking up Simon in the morning.

"Can't we just let Kit do it?" I said when we reached our doors.

"Yeah but then we wouldn't get the satisfaction of dumping water on him."

"That's the best you could think of?"

"It was just an idea," Derek said, leaning down to kiss me.

"You want to take advantage of our last unsupervised night?" I asked when we broke apart.

"I'd thought you'd never ask," he said, following me into my room and closing the door.

**Alright, that was the best I could do. This chapter seemed like a good idea originally, but then… well it just didn't work. So sorry for the sucky chapter, the next one should be better (hopefully). I'm gonna leave it at that, before my laptop's battery runs out and I can watch Jeepers Creepers, and get seriously creeped. Adios.**


	11. The End

Hey guys, long time, no write. I'm afraid, though, this isn't the long awaited 11th chapter. I'm done with this story. I've just gotten bored and don't really want to work on it anymore. I'm kind of sad about it, because I actually had a kind of good story coming up, after they recruit some people (one of which would be based on Noah from Total Drama Island which I was excited to write, although probably none of you know who that is) and talk to Casey's dad (I had no idea how that was going to work out though). At one little lab in Vegas, Casey and Chloe were going to get kidnapped vampires that were working for the Cabal guys in a completely unrelated to Chloe's gang way. Then there was going to be a whole rescue and other stuff that I hadn't really planned out. Oh, and the vampires would be hard core Princess Bride fans, actually incorporating quotes into their little threatening speeches and stuff. So yeah, it was at least a kind of interesting idea, but the work it would take to get there and make it fully formed wasn't really worth the trouble. I've just lost interest in the story, and for a long time I've felt like I _have_ to keep working on it, not _want_. Plus, I have better things to do, as well as things that aren't better but I have to do. So sorry for anyone who still reads this damn story, and go ahead and hate me, but it won't make me start writing this story again. And I won't write any other stories for Darkest Powers for sure, probably not for anything else either. I've realized the worthlessness of fan fiction and really just how fricken' bad it is usually, and don't really want to be associated with it anymore. So, that's it guys. Sorry again for anyone who really cares. Bye, I won't be back.

(P.S. One last of my probably annoying opinions, the Hunger Games movie was ih, nowhere near as good as I hoped and worse than I thought they could ever make it. And what the hell happened to Peeta's leg! That bastard needs to lose an appendage!)


End file.
